Ash and Soot

The ash has stopped falling.
During the conflagration, I swept
My patio repeatedly, pushing
Ash and soot to the side,
Only to have the winds rise
And deposit another layer.

The local fires have abated,
And the ash no longer drifts slowly
Earthward, lift by the inferno 
Towards heaven, and then to 
Settle slowly down.

All those hard earned goods
Fire consumed: roofs, walls,
Girders, balconies, garages.
Beds, sofas, pianos.
Well tailored suits and favored t-shirts

Turned into soot and ash, the ash
Blown away, to the beach, the sea,
Into the backyards of not too distant 
Neighbors, who swept their
Patios and deposited the ash

Into the ash-heaps.  
I wonder, as I sweep, what was
That before it became this:
A treasured book? A diary?
The secreted letters from a past lover?

A final note from a loved grandparent?
A parent’s instructions? A photograph
Undigitized of an antique time?
The last memento of a deceased child?
The fire refugees are very busy right now:

Where shall we sleep?  Shall we rebuild?
What shall be our place?  Shall we have
The time to reclaim that prior life?
What are our shoulds? What are our shalls?
What will be our will-bes?

My late cousin Ruchel fled Paris in 1940
With her son.  Years later she mourned
That she had to abandon the death mask
Of her first born.  She cried.  They lived.
But years later she cried.

Now is not the time for most to cry.
But I suppose, in the right time,
They shall.  But in the meantime,
As I sweep up the ash, 
Let me recall in the abstract
The memories they will later recall
In the concrete, as they rebuild
Whatever they shall rebuild.