Ashes

(for Steffen, Nicholas and Daniel)

They handed me his ashes in what might have been
a shopping bag, with handles. Inside it was a cardboard box
and inside that, ashes in a see-through plastic bag.
The bag of ashes is heavy in my arms and shifts when pressed.
They’re brown or beige like suede, a coverlet, a kitchen door.
I see the flecks of bone in ash the way I know late snowflakes
glow upon the soil. When we are ready, we stand together
in the field he loved so well to pour him on the ground,
around the trees and shrubs he tended over years,
the place his friends would play the games they loved.
I watch the bone chips lying on the soil like flakes of snow,
I see them lasting through the days of rain and wind,
the endless shaking of my heart. The bone chips do not fade.
Then one night after heavy storms, they disappear.
Like he did. But unlike him, I know that they’re still there.