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# Life, Ashen
- URL: https://randalljgreene.com/life-ashen/
- Published: 2025-04-28T12:07:45.000Z
- Updated: 2025-04-28T12:07:44.000Z
- Description: By writing my life in pages, to some extent I am attempting to immortalize myself, to extend my impact long beyond the grave. Yet even those words have an expiry, and maybe my legacy is not found in them after all.
- Author: Randall Greene
- Tags: Poetry

I scribble my life as words on a page  
each day another story by a wandering sage.  
And the book, it grows, day after day  
full of hope and fear, love and decay,  
as diverse as the moments  
from childhood to gray,  
every one of them captured,  
my life,  
a page.

But if my life is a book   
what happens when one day it burns?  
When the words crumble into the ashes  
of pages that will never turn  
again? A whole life spent in pursuit,  
not a line left to learn,  
now just residue of flames  
as amber after-images stir.

Was everything a waste,  
a drip after a drop  
in the bucket of history, outpaced  
by the relentless  
burn of the flames,  
consuming our lives,  
changing purpose into pain,  
into lifelines  
erased  
by the trudging on and onward of moments in time  
skipping ahead, falling behind  
by a line   
by a line   
by a line.

Maybe, true,  
life is not a book  
but a song, singing and sung,  
a song that beats on  
long after the words are gone,  
and yes, the words are gone,  
yet here we are  
still singing,  
singing,  
singing   
and sung.

## About This Poem

Lately I have been [thinking a lot about death](https://randalljgreene.com/flowers-instead/), about mortality, about what it means to be alive and to be remembered. As a writer, I have a deep desire for my words to outlast my flesh and bones, to challenge minds and inspire hearts long after I am gone; I strive to create art that endures.

But words will fade. Pages will burn. And what will be left of my art then? What will be left of my life?

Our lives are more than words on a page, no matter how beautiful those words may be; they are a chorus, sung by a choir, echoing into eternity.