Ash Wednesday

It is Ash Wednesday.
I know it because of the ashen cross
bruised across his forehead;

I could see his pilgrimage to church,
the leaning, kneeling,
reverence for mortality.

“Dust thou art,
and unto dust
shalt thou return.”

This man not being me,
I can approve from afar.
Honor of being with death;

a loved one or the love
that lives on, changes,
becomes mortality.