The Ashes
You were carried here by hands
and now the wind has you, gritty
as incense, dark sparkles borne
in the shape of blowing,
this great atmospheric bloom,
spinning under the bridge and expanding—
shape of wind and its pattern
of shattering. Having sloughed off
the urn's temporary shape,
there is another of you now—
tell me which to speak to:
the one you were, or are, the one who waited
in the ashes for this scattering, or the one
now added to the already haunted woods,
the woods that sigh and shift their leaves—
where your mystery billows, then breathes.
and now the wind has you, gritty
as incense, dark sparkles borne
in the shape of blowing,
this great atmospheric bloom,
spinning under the bridge and expanding—
shape of wind and its pattern
of shattering. Having sloughed off
the urn's temporary shape,
there is another of you now—
tell me which to speak to:
the one you were, or are, the one who waited
in the ashes for this scattering, or the one
now added to the already haunted woods,
the woods that sigh and shift their leaves—
where your mystery billows, then breathes.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Karin Gottshall works at the Middlebury College library in Vermont. This poem first appeared in Tar River Poetry, Vol. 44, No. 1, Fall, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author. Poem copyright © 2004 by Karin Gottshall. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.