The Ash Theory
A poem about shattered certainty.
This poem explores the moment when certainty collapses, leaving behind something lighter, quieter, and strangely more honest. We often construct ideas that seem solid – beliefs about the world, ourselves, and what matters. Yet time and experience inevitably burn through these structures. What remains after the fire is ash: the soft residue of something that once claimed permanence.
Ash is a humble material. It does not attempt to become what it was, nor does it pretend the ruin never occurred. Instead, it drifts, breaks apart, and moves wherever the slightest current takes it. In that scattering, a subtle transformation occurs. What was once rigid and singular becomes countless tiny directions, small rebellions against the notion that anything must remain fixed forever.
“What we call the beginning is often the end and to make and end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”-T. S. Eliot
The Ash Theory
This poem is ash
that I kick into the air
just to see where it lands.
Once there was structure,
something that insisted on its shape
and its importance.
Ash is what certainty looks like
after it has been corrected.
I lift a cloud of it,
and for a moment
the ruined thing performs a miracle:
it becomes many.
A thousand soft rebellions
lifting from the same dead substance.
What an honest material–
It does not pretend to rebuild.
Every particle holds a possibility:
this direction, or that,
or disappearance.
And there I am again,
standing over the remainder,
how easily a certainty
becomes a handful of grey,
light enough
to scatter.
Miriam H. Monarres
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Love,
Miriam
That was a wonderful poem. I like how the ash was used throughout. Beautifully done.
Wonderful poem Miriam. I read it over and over (which means I was enthralled by it). It got me thinking about the other possibilities of ash. After a forest fire here, a chemical in the ash, along with rain, triggers the seeds to grow. And then there is the use of ash to clear clay from water, settling the particles, and make the water drinkable.