Forever Dust - Feb 2 2026

 

Forever Dust

Feb 2 2026

Dust accumulates.

It settles invisibly

and as methodically

as the passage of time.

It’s like the slow steady drip

that wears down rock

as lifetimes pass

and species go extinct.

You won’t live to see the end of it

because it never does,

materializing

out of thin air

like some cosmic sleight of hand.

The Bible says

ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

There’s a pleasing circularity to this

 — that nothing is created or destroyed

just temporarily changed.

Which means that everyone who’s ever lived

has turned to dust

as I wipe down the tabletop

and vacuum the rug.

So is my war on dust irreverent, sacrilegious

even sinful?

Or is it humbling?

That in the end, we’re all equal

no matter what,

despite privilege, ambition, and the accident of birth;

as level

as the fine layer of dust

on my clear glass tabletop.

I dust.

The noun becomes a verb

because what's the difference;

it’s still dust

just moved from here to there.

My mother kept an immaculate house,

she believed 

in keeping up appearances. 

A white glove

touching any surface

would be unsullied,

a shaft of light

slanting through the glass

shone clear.

But for just as long as she was here,

gamely holding back the dust

like an earthen dam

in a sudden flood;

eventually buckling

which, like all of us, it inexorably does. 

I wonder, if I didn’t dust

would it accumulate

layer upon layer;

the way stratified rock

becomes a geological clock

recording prehistory?

Each layer

containing its fingerprint

of war, eruption, pandemic,

climate change

and continental drift,

undisturbed 

for millennia after millennia. 

Until the world is buried in dust,

and in the fullness of time

turns to it.

As I sit here, my clear glass tabletop stares accusingly back. Its layer of fine dust demands to be cleaned. I’ve been delinquent in my housekeeping. Which, of course, is never done. Because dust keeps appearing: steadily, inexorably, as if out of thin air. 

And it’s still dusty as I end this. Apparently, writing a poem is way more fun than keeping up appearances!