Ashes

Your great-grandchildren place red carnations
on the polished surface of all that’s left of you;
grasp your weight in brass handles,
threaded with ornament of white crepe.

The pastor speaks as if he had known you
all your life, but you were a late immigrant
always clutching at your Welsh roots,
and we send you into the flames with a Gaelic prayer.

Between hymns, he takes the liberty
of slipping in a salvation message.
I want to run from this too hot room, its human silences;
shake off the unbearable light.

Later, you will return to the country of your blood
and my Grandfather will shake out your ashes
on the mountainside at Brynithel
where our ancestor climbed from the valley

to marry her beloved
in the thirteenth century chapel;
where family ghosts shadow the earth’s veins
in all the mines of the valley
and your ashes seep in with the rain.

(c)Deb Matthews-Zott