A poem from my 2004 collection, "Visions and Voices".

ASHES

Ashes live in ancient caves, in oven graves and smoky waves.

Ashes are powdered night.

Finality.

Seared carbon blanks.

Ashes are the speechless survivors of destruction.

Ashes chaperone new life.

The fertilisers.

The sign of something new –

The bold yet modest seeds.

Ugly and beautiful at once,

Alive and dead.

Fertile sterility,

Striking,

Magnetic,

Moving and Sad.

Fragile fragments of infinity,

ashes are the curtains of creation.

“We are all made from the ashes of dead stars.”