(This is a poem I wrote for Ash Wednesday 2017. I'm re-running it today even though I had to leave the service before the Imposition of Ashes, so, this year, no smudge for me.)

"Golgotha–Mt Calvary–Israel" by R. Orville Lyttle is a Creative Commons image licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Once more the cross stands
    at the Place of the Skull.

Every year I come here, dragging my load
of cares and failures and dashed hopes,
all singed and smoking,
snatched out of the fire of my waywardness.

Every year...