On Ash Wednesday

On Ash Wednesday

V.P. Loggins

Teach us to sit still
—T. S. Eliot

The furnace clicks, then groans,
then begins to exhale. Morning
awaits the light. The house creeks

as with the pressures of time.
My shoes are poised for filling.
Yesterday a snow reminded us

of sleep, a white duvet of silence.
Then ice began to form and night’s
cold hand laid down a carapace

of crystal. The morning moon,
a wide-eyed Narcissus, has fallen
in love with its face in the ice.

Itself. Its borrowed light. While
the sun comes again and rises.

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V.P. Loggins
Poet & Author

V. P. is the author of The Wild Severance (2021), Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Competition winner, The Green Cup (2017), Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize winner, and The Fourth Paradise (Main Street Rag 2010). His poems appear in Poet Lore, Poetry Ireland Review, The Southern Review and elsewhere. To see more, visit www.vploggins.com.

Photography by Christopher De Los Rios