What’s Left
written by: Jenny Middleton
Eddie drives me by a burnt-out house, its ashes
are claggy with rain, its life a waste of ashes.
One day everything will disintegrate, I think
of the woman, man, child that are chased by ashes.
The street is haunted with the memory of flames and falling
rafters, the dancing photographs erasing into ashes.
A yew tree’s bark glows red, its roots coil
beneath memorials and consumes the dead’s ashes.
Everything is expendable and everything is precious
an empty coke can balances on a gate post doused in ashes.
People have the capacity to do good and to harm.
An egret wades away from a diesel spill and loose ashes.
A bus is shuddering to a stop on the road above the river
like a thought that spirals and spirals rousing from its ashes.
Being able to move on is as important as remembering—
Jenny, look at the crocuses, full of spring fire, rising through the ashes.
- What’s Left - January 14, 2026
- The X-Ray - September 29, 2025
- Placebos - June 12, 2025
