{"id":2670,"date":"2014-10-19T17:33:34","date_gmt":"2014-10-19T17:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/?p=2670"},"modified":"2014-10-19T17:33:34","modified_gmt":"2014-10-19T17:33:34","slug":"ashes-and-dust-by-ethan-evans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/ashes-and-dust-by-ethan-evans\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashes and Dust by Ethan Evans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"evans\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

Ashes and Dust<\/h1>\n

by Ethan Evans<\/p>\n

A man and woman were planted in the grass
\nThey looked like mutinous trees
\nFeet and roots started from the ground
\nStrong and straight
\nBut over time rebelled
\nOr maybe just got tired
\nand started growing into these
\nlawn chairs. Comfortably
\ndepressed.<\/p>\n

Toys are strewn around the yard.
\nA faded plastic pedal-car
\ncracked and on its side.
\nThe wind blows and
\na wheel turns silently.<\/p>\n

A sandbox shaped like a turtle flounders,
\nhalf of its former contents spilled
\nout in dunes across the sidewalk
\nleading up to the house.<\/p>\n

G.I. Joe and his many clones
\nare scattered after having their helicopter
\nshot down on a nighttime raid.
\nThere’s no one at HQ
\nTo plan a rescue mission.<\/p>\n

Barbie and her sisters
\nhave become Amazons
\nmaking their home among the green.
\nForgotten and attempting to
\nlive off the land.<\/p>\n

Where are the children?
\nYoung saplings swaying in the breeze.
\nWhere is the boy and girl who played here?
\nSeedlings who hadn’t yet established roots.<\/p>\n

The man and woman stare straight ahead
\nas I walk by their lonely yard.
\nFather and Mother Sycamore
\nsmoke cigarettes and
\nthe irony is not lost on me.
\nTired trees with cigarettes in their branches
\nInhaling what can burn them to a crisp.<\/p>\n

But their eyes meet mine and
\nI shiver because I see that
\nthey’ve already burned themselves
\nfrom the inside out
\nand the only thing left is darkened bark
\nand withered branches.
\nAnd it wouldn’t surprise me if I walked
\npast this way tomorrow and they were gone,
\nburned to ash,
\nfloating away gently in the night.
\n###<\/p>\n

Ethan Evans is a high school English teacher in Southwest Missouri who keeps trying to convince his students that poetry is important. He enjoys reading, writing, and watching the Kansas City Royals play baseball. He considers Ted Kooser his spirit animal and reads said spirit animal’s poems voraciously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethan Evans is a high school English teacher in Southwest Missouri who keeps trying to convince his students that poetry is important. He enjoys reading, writing, and watching the Kansas City Royals play baseball<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2672,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/poemeveryday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}