White Ash

There is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice.

 She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door.

 Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice... but these are some of her thoughts:

 The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron.

 The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke.

 The love of a young man whose sweetheart married an older man for money burns with a sputtering uncertain flame.

 And there is a love... one in a thousand... burns clean and is gone leaving a white ash....

 And this is a thought she never explains to the parrot and goldfish and two white mice.
White Ash

by Carl Sandburg, 1920
