What Still Carries Heat

A reflection on Spring, grief and the Five Elements of return.

Discovering the Five Elements in every season. A reflection and poem.

Please note: I’m taking this week off from posting meditations and Yin Yoga practices, but I look forward to connecting again next week. – JS

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Dear reader,

A few weeks ago, I stood with two friends at the edge of their land on Cape Cod, feeding branches into a brush fire. It was one of those half-mild April days when spring feels more like rumor than arrival. The fire caught quickly. Smoke rose in ribbons. We fed it slowly: pine limbs, oak twigs, the brittle leftovers of a long winter.

And I kept thinking—so much of this year has felt like that. Standing beside the heap of what no longer belongs. Watching it burn. A quiet, necessary ritual of elemental mourning.

Jack Gilbert once wrote:

“We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

But that kind of acceptance takes practice—especially when the furnace feels personal. When the grief arrives unannounced: mid-task, mid-breath, mid-journey.

Every season has a turning point. Not a spectacle, but a subtle moment. A green shoot threading through ash. A bird calling out before the light. Something insists on returning.

In Chinese Medicine, Spring belongs to Wood—the element of direction, growth, and renewal. But growth depends on digestion. And grief, in its strange wisdom, teaches us how to metabolize what has ended.

Though sadness is often linked with Metal and the season of Fall, I've found that grief touches all Five Elements of Chinese Medicine:

• Earth steadies grief’s tremble.

• Metal discerns what remains.

• Water thaws and flows grief’s frozenness.

• Wood stretches what was clenched.

• Fire loves the joy that still flickers.

Ash Season

After the raking and pruning comes the pile,
then the match.
You watch it bloom as
smoke peels skyward like regret
finally unspooled.
No music plays.
Only wind,
and the crack of sap
surrendering.

A friend offers soup;
you decline.
Opt instead for sardines
and crackers—
the meal of monks
and humbled souls.

Still—there is sunlight,
smoke,
and the earth beneath
your folding chair.

This is ash season:
What carries heat
will soon feed green.
And from the far corners
of the burnt map,
a single shoot of joy
rises without asking permission.

-J Summers

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Thank you for reading.

This post is part of an ongoing series exploring the Five Elements as a living map for practice and transformation.

If someone in your life is standing beside a burning heap of what was, send this their way. It might help them breathe easier.

With warmth,
Josh