Newsletter sign up

Be the first to know when new American Life in Poetry columns are live.

Column 021

The Ashes

Intro by Ted Kooser
08.24.2005

How many of us, alone at a grave or com­ing upon the site of some remem­bered event, find our­selves speak­ing to a friend or loved one who has died? In this poem by Karin Gottshall the speak­er address­es some­one’s ash­es as she casts them from a bridge. I like the way the ash­es take on new life as they merge with the wind. 

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.

Share this column

Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

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.