<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Ashes Among the Remains</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">My father responded</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><i class="">Just throw them away</i></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I did not nor did I cast them into</div><div class="">ocean or bay where we’d fished</div><div class="">flounder and fluke nor strew them</div><div class="">over the golf courses where he’d hit</div><div class="">multistage rockets rising from half an inch </div><div class="">then to a foot above fairways </div><div class="">to summarily explode</div><div class="">hundreds of yards into the future</div><div class="">other worldly fireworks released </div><div class="">by his elegantly compact fury.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Instead I left them in their box</div><div class="">a golden shiny tin ossuary</div><div class="">next to my mother’s on the top shelf </div><div class="">of my bedroom closet</div><div class="">where I did not have to make decisions</div><div class="">and I incidentally could visit them daily</div><div class="">until our house burned down</div><div class="">in the California wildfires</div><div class="">October Ninth 2017</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I don’t intend here to dwell upon</div><div class="">the nightmare that fire is <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span> </div><div class="">I will not detail the feelings we had</div><div class="">as we evacuated in one of our cars</div><div class="">along with the family terrier and nothing else </div><div class="">though later we did contemplate </div><div class="">Dad’s and Mom’s remains further</div><div class="">consumed by 1500 degree flames</div><div class="">extending their years-earlier incineration</div><div class="">in an oven at the crematorium near Petaluma.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Were it not that my parents lived well into</div><div class="">their nineties I so sick depressed and barely 74</div><div class="">might feel prepared to let go of the tangible rim </div><div class="">to the bottomless jar of all that remains</div><div class="">to the what or the where or the not.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Ed Coletti</div></body></html>