The ashes are so plentiful they fill the earth and sky,
I cannot reach the surface, though I try and try and try,
Oh, how I wish to travel back and choose another door,
But I can only look ahead and see the things in store.

The past was dark and dreary and the future is the same,
I try to point at others, but there’s only me to blame,
I wouldn’t stop to listen when they told me I was wrong,
So now I’m sifting ashes as I listen to their song.

My life is full of ashes of the future and the past,
And though I try to brush them off, I know the die is cast,
Although the Phoenix rises, it will never rise for me,
I’ll be the person who I was and who I’ll always be.

Then one day as I leave this life and ashes I become,
I’ll float up to the heavens and I’ll block the light of sun,
Then all will know the way it was, and for eternity,
I’ll pay for all my actions, buried deep in ash debris.

This post was originally published on Your Poems, Your Stories at Sifting Ashes.

I sat and the woman joined me

On the wintry steel settee.

Soon we rose silently to the window

And leaned out on the cold window sill.

Every wall was damp depraved and dead;

Damp depraved and dead they were!

Itโ€™s hibernation time for man;

Time and again there was a madrigal

From the youth quaffing at the bar;

The ageing drunks sprawling as they pass.

But for this prevailed the great silence-

The conditioner of creation and hope.

Oh! The nest hanging from the naked tree!

Are they pining for a phoenix?

I glanced aside at the woman,

And hastened to the wintry steel settee.

Iโ€™m not gossiping with the woman;

I fear the trimming of my hair;

I never tried the riddles of life,

Nor did I claim to be a mystic,

Holding the key to the gates of heaven;

I was not a prophet of any degree;

But I will say what I will,

Even as you deem me a Cassandra:

Man was happy when he was not hopeless;

Birds were brisk before they were pinioned;

Trees were green and full of leaves

Before the leaves fell and they were no more.

They are all dead and beyond retrieval!

What now of our charade,

With hope for its key-word

And summer at the guess end?

This post was originally published on Your Poems, Your Stories at Winter.