Kay Dolezal

To T. S. Eliot on reading Ash Wednesday 

Mr. Eliot, long-time semi-savior, 

 Your words come to my rescue. 

This time when you pray to 

The ‘blessed sister, holy mother’. 

Your cry is so simply put I feel 

I can join mine with yours, 

Praying for instruction on how 

To ‘sit still, at peace in His will’, 

 How to discern when ‘to care 

and not to care’ can be so hard for us. 

Easter then brings springtime, 

Rivers flow, blooms are everywhere. 

Among the mossy ‘rocks’ of daily life, 

 Mothered by Mary, I give thanks.

It turned out a poem came to me not from the images you provided, but from the T. S. Eliot verse. His work turned me on to poetry seventy years ago. So it felt right to meditate on this section of his poem, Ash Wednesday, and come up with one of my own.