Ashes and Stars

by Rhonda Fitzgerald-Hunter

We were shaped from clay and starlight,
hands pressed into the earth’s soft memory.
Stone for our homes, fire for our breath,
water carving songs into our bones.

Civilizations rose like crops in spring,
only to fall like harvest straw.
Walls turned to soil,
temples folded back into hills,
ashes scattered where fires once warmed our hands.

Nothing is wasted.
What was flesh becomes soil,
what was stone becomes dust,
what was story becomes wind.

From the ashes we came.
To the ashes we return.
And yet, in the turning of the wheel,
our footprints become constellations,
our whispers become seeds,
our endings become beginnings.

So we stand on the old stones,
breathing the same sky as our ancestors,
knowing that even in fading
we are part of the great remembering—
ashes and stars,
earth and spirit,
forever coming home.