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Embers

On the last night
visiting a love from long ago,
we sit in the dark
beside a backyard bonfire.

We talk of dreams
and compromises,
the smoothed-over scars
of our shared past
as smoke spirals to the sky,
dances beneath
the tips of Tucson stars.

He tells me everything
has arrived early this year—
the spring winds,
the saguaro blooms,
the dry season.

We stare into the fire,
poke at the embers
with a long stick.
It’s an old game of ours,
this contest to crush the last coal,
the catch always
that once extinguished,
something—the wind,
a wayward spark,
an invisible internal force—
reignites the flame.

How long I’ve struggled
to trust this ancient rhythm
of ebb and flow, this wisdom
that what falters now
can flourish later.

Who would have guessed
that we would find ourselves
here together, comfort
on this cold desert night in which
we will let the embers burn on.

—
Lea Aschkenas is a public librarian and a teacher with California Poets in the Schools. Her books include the memoir Es Cuba: Life and Love on an Illegal Island (Hachette Book Group) and the children’s book Arletis, Abuelo, and the Message in a Bottle (Star Bright Books). Her poetry and prose has been published or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Bracken, Poets Reading the News, CALYX, World Literature Today, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. She is currently submitting her poetry manuscript The Haunting for publication.

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