<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(22, 25, 31);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Ashes Among the Remains</span></p><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(22, 25, 31);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">My father responded</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(22, 25, 31);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Just throw them away</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(22, 25, 31);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">I did not nor did I cast them into<br class="">
ocean or bay where we’d fished<br class="">
flounder and fluke nor strew them<br class="">
over the golf courses where he’d hit<br class="">
multistage rockets rising from half an inch <br class="">
then to a foot above fairways <br class="">
to summarily explode<br class="">
hundreds of yards into the future<br class="">
other worldly fireworks released <br class="">
by his elegantly compact fury.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(22, 25, 31);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Instead I left them in their box<br class="">
a golden shiny tin ossuary<br class="">
next to my mother’s on the top shelf <br class="">
of my bedroom closet<br class="">
where I did not have to make decisions<br class="">
and I incidentally could visit them daily<br class="">
until our house burned down<br class="">
in the California wildfires<br class="">
October Ninth 2017</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(22, 25, 31);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">I don’t intend here to dwell upon<br class="">
the nightmare that fire is <br class="">
I will not detail the feelings we had<br class="">
as we evacuated in one of our cars<br class="">
along with the family terrier and nothing else <br class="">
though later we did contemplate <br class="">
Dad’s and Mom’s remains further<br class="">
consumed by 1500 degree flames<br class="">
extending their years-earlier incineration<br class="">
in an oven at the crematorium near Petaluma.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(22, 25, 31);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Were it not that my parents lived well into<br class="">
their nineties I so sick depressed and barely 74<br class="">
might feel prepared to let go of the tangible rim <br class="">
to the bottomless jar of all that remains<br class="">
to the what or the where or the not.</span></p><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(22, 25, 31);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Ed Coletti</span></div></div></body></html>