A dust-like life
Infinitely light, but perhaps the start of everything
Maybe it isn't that there's dust in the air
but that the dust is holding the air in place
Maybe it isn't something trivial shaken off from objects or living things,
but that meeting, piling, clumping dust is what objects and living things are made of
Sometimes, out of nowhere, as if it were no big deal, I think about a dust-like life
Drifting listlessly in the wind as if powerless,
and then, before you know it, filling half the room like pine pollen
Thin but wide, arriving as something trivial,
and ending up soaking this whole body through, like a drizzle
These past forty years, running endlessly, falling down, running again, my thirties,
I thought I was chasing flames,
but maybe I was just fluttering around, chased by flames, kicking up nothing but dust
For the forties ahead,
I'm hoping for a dust-like life
In someone's daily life,
in someone's memory,
I'd like to become that kind of quiet, gentle dust.
