Verse chapters are interspersed throughout From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way, with the poems establishing the tone and theme of subsequent chapters to come. Each of these poems carries symbolism relevant to different experiences and events in Jesse Thistle’s story.

For example, “Indigenous Affairs” appears even before the Prologue, setting the tone for the entire book and hinting at how Thistle’s Métis-Cree background is relevant to his experiences with homelessness and addiction. The poem also references Thistle (presented as an unnamed speaker) fishing change out of the Centennial Flame fountain, an image revisited at the end of the book when it no longer elicits a sense of belonging.

In “A Little Boy’s Dream,” the packed bag with contents of Thistle’s old life symbolizes the feeling of instability and despair that his young self feels in constantly having to move homes. “A Father’s Love” displays the kind of neglect Thistle and his brothers experienced from their father.

In “Windigo,” Thistle uses specific, significant imagery to describe his life on the streets. The harsh conditions and his subsequent addiction ravage his body, and he uses the image of a “windigo” (a mythological creature from Indigenous lore, specifically the Algonquian-speaking First Nations) to describe this deterioration.