look, it takes some of us a while to type up our ash wednesday poems

there at the gym, we have ashes on our foreheads.
not all of us. or most of us. but some of us.
and some of us have just a grey smudge on our foreheads,
forgotten, maybe, and certainly faint enough that i have to look twice,
secretly, to see who's wearing ashes.

how could there be so many?
maybe a dozen in my fluorescent suburban gym.
people wearing ashes, people claimed by God.
People who were willing to stare down their mortality
by 4pm in the afternoon on a wednesday,
when snow is falling yet again,
and we all still have too much work to do.
but we all took a moment: on purpose or by accident,
or out of mis-guided obligation-
to remember that in death and life, we are beloved of God.

The Risen Lord has claimed our lives, and our bodies, and our foreheads:
smudged or scarred or clean or ugly.
My God, the Crucified, loves every forehead
at the florescent suburban gym.