Ashes to Ashes, poetry by Tina Privitera-Reynolds at Spillwords.com
Michael Chacon

Ashes to Ashes

Ashes to Ashes

written by: Tina Privitera-Reynolds

 

A worker stubs out a cigarette.
The kind that rises blue puffs.

On the innocent arm of a tree. A mother of honey-gold suckles. Petals

wilting. Heavy with tears in a sigh.
She wears a nicotine bruise on her

mossy trunk. The cigarette rolls to her feet, her poking-out roots. Not

extinguished. A light smolder warms to spreading heat. Her svelte figure

dissolves in elegant smoke rings. The season was dry. Catching sparks in

her fibers was painful. Sparks turn
to flickering flames. With a ravenous

appetite for vulnerable flesh. A chain
begins. They fall in grey heaps of ash

and blue hell. Fire and brimstone. A fallen green cluster. Charred stumps

and wisps of dust for headstones. A lunch break can change a landscape.

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