Ashes Rain, Coast To Coast Poem by Sally Sandler

What ashes fall upon the winter snow
that traveled through the ozone to our door
from liquid fires, raging as they flow
like rivers to the California shore?

A wedding dress in flakes as fine as whispers,
the fragments of the crib a father framed,
all the photo books, brothers and sisters.
Alas … these ashes bear too many names

and smoke-stained faces to identify
the separate family stories raining here.
But history says a place called Paradise
was lost, and now their past is singed and seared...

and mingles with a jet stream in the sky,
and rains across the continent like tears.