What the Ash Keeps

My shadow drags its burnt hem
across stone.

Behind me, the gate
has forgotten its hinge.
No trumpet.
No hand in the smoke.

I wait for thunder
to spend my old name,
but rain strikes the mountain,
the roof,
the river,
and passes through each
without allegiance.

Ash enters everything:
the seam of a boot,
the mouth of a lock,
the prints of those
who ran before me.

Under the black ground,
a seed splits.

Not pardon.
Not victory.
Only the small violence
of green
forcing its way upward.

By morning,
a weed has shouldered
one corner of the slab.

Its root works deeper
where no light reaches,
quietly making
a place to begin.