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.