March thaw revealed
the ash bucket’s cinders strewn into my daughter’s rock garden,
dead coals squashing tender moss, staining her cherished hens and chicks.
Had I carried the bucket three steps further,
set it on the barn’s cement ramp:
none of this damage, no repair needed.
Ahead lies
April’s tedious work of extracting cinder from tendril.
This winter of disease.
It was enough those wobbly February mornings
that I shoveled the spent coals, toted the bucket off the porch
kindled the fire, and kept myself alive.
