Tuesday 5 May 2020


Language of ash

by Carolyn Cushing


Rest your hip 
in curve of earth.
Since you are ash
you lift like hawk’s feathers
staring into night’s embrace.
Silence makes you a stairway
to climb. Beside my window
trees sing shadow to shadow
shaping words unheard but known:

I am without origin 
now. Without language,
I hear the secret 
of leaves come 
from nothing
to love, again, 
the light.


* * * * *

Carolyn Cushing is a poet inspired by nature, slightly obsessed with cells, and currently focused on the places where life and death meet. She has been a finalist for the Philbrick Poetry Award of the Providence Athenaeum (2012) and the Tarantula Poetry Contest of Pilgrimage Journal (2018). Her poetry and prose can be found at soulpathsanctuary.com.



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