Dust to Dust

April 7 2014

Objects gather dust.

The stuff you bought
with the best of intentions.

Or dropped

in some darkened closet,

lost behind the couch.

Walk past, inattentively,

as unquestioned as a bearing wall.

Dead skin, as we wear away
in dull layers
of grime.
Dust-to-dust,
starting from the outside
in.

How disgusting, you say,
the state of decomposition
in which we live.
The house

settling into neglect.

The accretion of time

things left behind.

Our messy residue

of dead skin, dried sweat,

indelible prints
with the sheen of human oil.

We are less and less,
steadily sloughing off.

When you live by yourself
things stay where they're put,
so familiar
they seem ordained.
The weight of possession
you never notice,
evenly coated

with dust.

And everyday stuff,

worn, and chipped, and scuffed

wiped clean.

You also see daily

and haven't noticed for years.

I came across this phrase: "the transfigured commonplace". I've repeatedly used the expressions microcosm and close observation to describe my own poetry. But I think this phrase may get closer.

Anyway, I thought a poem that valorized the commonplace and everyday would be worth trying. I thought of the few things I use over and over. And then all the rest, that sits in dark corners and low light, gathering dust. So unexpectedly, it became a poem about dust.

The first time I understood that a lot of this stuff is us, it was a story about pressure cleaning the grime off subway walls, the dark film that had accumulated over years of neglect. The story said that most of this dark grime was the dead layer of sloughed-off human skin. And although I once heard that most dust comes from outer space -- the stuff of exploding stars, disintegrated meteors -- I think I also heard that a lot of it is also us: more dead skin!

I ended up keeping the poem true to my original idea of inattention: so it begins and ends with things unquestioned, unseen, unobserved.