Ashes to Ash

All life is elemental alchemy:

Fire fueled, air inspired -

Mothered by minerals

And maintained by water -

The philosopher's fluid.

All life is movement:

Beneath dove-demure bark -

Leopard-spotted by lichen -

Sound -

Ascensions and downward flows;

The tension and release of breeze-blown branches.

Atmospheric energy thrums

From tip of giddy twig

To tap each roaming root

In earth's wide-webbed-weave.

All life is harmony:

The balance of willing and loving;

Of attunement and surrender;

Connection not containment -

For each keep can become a prison -

Don't fence me in.

All life is sensitivity and resonance;

All life is vulnerability and dependence -

Always and already entangled -

And

All life dies back

To be re-ensouled in soil.

But - ah! - here and now -

Surge, search, reach into riotous efflorescence -

Fine-fingered foliage seek sun-drenched sky,

And so

Strain light into being.

The Phoenix doesn't rise from the ashes -

The Phoenix is the Ash -

Yggdrasil -

Tree of life.

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The photo is not the Ash I communed with, but it fits the message of Ashes to Ash! It's a survivor - and is providing a home for a woodpecker!

This is THE Ash.