Living Ashes

(6 March 2019)

 

Ash Wednesday

Day of ash

Start of Lent

A slowing time

As in lento when the music

Slows

Because it must so that the fullness

Is appreciated

 

Cigar ash

Ash rising from an evening fire

On the hearth inside

Or ‘round a ring in a sponsored place

Where campers meet

To sing

Or tell stories

All of which, like music,

Can lead the pace as well

 

Ashen face

Missing blood and signs

Of lively living,

Ash that’s left of things

Incinerated

Blasted in a furnace of white heat

‘Til blood is dried, marrow has cooked

In bones

And inorganic things released

Of familiar substance

Until only unringed nuclei

Are left

A mystery for spectroscopy

 

Livened ash

We are reminded

Adama

We return to earth

But keep in mind what

We are now

All the substance, all the motion

We can own

 

C L Couch

 

 

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA – NASA Satellite Captures New Russian Volcanic Eruption, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51484278

For the first time in 35 years, the Plosky Tolbachik volcano in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula erupted on Nov. 27, 2012, sending clouds of ash to the height of more than 9,800 feet (3,000 meters).