Dust to Dust

It's impossible to escape the noxious fumes, the dirt that takes flight with each wheel that circles the pavement and I don't know if it’s trying to escape, or return home. Bruised & battered from the merciless pounding, patched together with erratic veins protecting a subterranean pain and I can sense its pulse as my feet stumble/strut/drag across the surface and I wonder how our differently our soles feel to it.

I remember reading that dust used to be something else – life, transformed into the tiny floating particles I marveled at as a child, mesmerized by their delicate dance in rays of sunlight. My dog tries to gather them in her mouth, oblivious to the futility of snapping at the air. Her gaze makes me think she recognizes the aliveness in them, the memory of it.

I close the windows.

I didn’t know that was poetry.