Dust (poem)

Dust

Dust clots on table ends

A hiving manufactory within

Colluding by concealment

Iota by micrometer rebukes

The rag itself devolves to lint

A cry in code descends in sweat and skin

And bakes a cake in corners left unclean

Its cumbrance plods uncounted

Yet to be sure

Fatigued and overladen and uncaring

Along moldings under beds

Year by year dust

Should rise and overthrow us in our sleep

But vanishes with a snap of electricity

Dust is the planet’s great commodity

Frictioning with kinetic energy

And all around modest transactions fill the air

We have never thought worth seeing

Frayed at the cuffs and stained down the front

Your house was a chest of drawers

The legs that held it upright

Severed when it landed where it fell

The intersection’s traffic blares and merges past

And you cocooned in the toe of a sock

Littered with insect husks

Old silk hankies with their off-color perfume

Didn’t see until the light seeped through the cracks

We swim in a current

The current is a solvent

We are shaken and dissolving

Into dust

Dust

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(2015, Stephanie Foster)