Ash

Ash

You hover above me kissing both my cheeks.
Change will arrange itself like towels
put out for special seasons or guests.
Time and time again, bouquets
to waste space at the breakfast table
In a time that never sits down to eat.
The drugged winter lays around,
and I find it best to smile like a compensating flower
that knows it has past its peak.
I walk the dead gardens in the afternoon, finding
how they are silently at work
inspiring
in a time when it seems like nothing around here speaks.
I hide prayers from you, the world,
down in the sun past the old granite creak.
When I touch the water, I can feel something
stirred by a dawn,
which gives me hope to walk on ,
as I walk through a land covered by snow
that feels like it’s suffocated and can’t eat or speak.
I have lived like this for years,
since I left my skin in a bud of hope
never to hear back from it.
Still, every day you kiss my cheek,
trying to reassure me
you can see my orchard,
my balsams, and the tiny birds
that perch in their joy.
They’re just over the horizon, you keep telling me
soon the season will come.