Ashes

Do not burn me to ashes

then pour me into a vase.

Let my body be food

for life-giving worms.

In place of my bones 

a mighty tree might bloom,

and every time you eat

from its seeds and fruit

my atoms shall find

a loving home in you,

and in the rhythmic throb

of your beating heart,

you will carry the pulse

of a million lives,

for the fruit of me

is of a million more—

each will have eaten

the seeds and flesh

of a fruit once fed

by those before.

First place in the 2025 River Amulet Poetry Prize by River Paw Press