Poems & Ashes

It’s so cold today that we gather inside, light her candle, and read Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching A Cloud Never Dies. 

I can’t read my poem out loud, so each person reads it on their own. 

Then we all go out in the yard and take turns spreading our dog’s ashes together, wherever we feel called.

I spread them beneath my magnolia tree under the branch that extends far out over the grass.   The branch that holds her windchimes now. 

My daughters do the same.

My eldest son chooses the open space where they play, and my youngest goes all around the sliding board.

I am spreading the last of her ashes beneath the wild bushes where the cardinal flew – just behind our firewood, because it feels right for her to be with what transforms.

This is my morning, writing and releasing, preparing a ceremony for our beloved.

We do not keep any of her ashes

except the ones on the wind,

the ones we breathed in.