The ash pile from the Holy Burn, 
salt-and-pepper, crowns the gravel 
of the church parking lot. The Christmas trees, 
Bibles, and palm leaves from Easter
have begun a second life as smoke and ash.

I think of January in terms of blue: 
icy aquamarine, cerulean, the blue that 
swirls over china plates, the tired, washed-out
blue of the winter sky.

In this season of after-light, the trash on the roadside 
is glaring, as are the corpses I drove past to get here, 
deer, foxes, and opossums.

The orange berries on the barren shrubs
have no business being there.

Hope is a labor like any other.