To Make Color

Every morning, my grandmother cleaned the Fischer stove

in the back of the trailer, lifted ash in a shovel, careful

not to spill the white-gray dust. Precious, she said, her breath

smoking in the cold. Precious in winter's first lavender

not-quite-light—and you could smell it, the faintest acrid hint

of ash, a crispness calling you from bed. You could watch her

cap it in a chicory coffee can to stack among others, back bent

from a long-gone fever. For the garden in spring, she said.