Sky Colored Ashes (For Ada 1st United Methodist Church and all Ghosts of Christian Faith)

Skeletal
but recognizable
sanctuary
ghosted
in stone
once engaging
minds and hearts
worshiping.
Now
engaging
brilliant blue sky.

No laughter
echoing
children's faith.
Children's
drawings
dust.
Absent
life,
only
acrid
smoke
lives on.

Organ
dessicated,
piped faith
silenced
only
enfleshed
synapses
and
vocal memory
hold
the
songs.

Sacred dance
of worship
will be
danced
by
wind
with
partner
of
wafting smoke
now.

My mother was...
my parents were...
my baby took
his
first steps
there
in
stone walls
now
absent
sacred glass.

You sheltered
our God-
sized
hopes.

Where do you blow
Holy Spirit
when
your
absence is marked
in ashes,
not on foreheads
but on
distraught
earth?

All is lost
all is lost.
Grieving
stains
black
cheeks
with
small
streams
of tears.

But...
I
remember
our faith
was
never
contained
in wood
and glass
and stone
after all.

It
lives
in my
heart
when
it
sees
a blue sky
or

when it

touches

you.