Dust
There is dust on everything in Nevada
- William Stafford
Dust settles on clocks, accumulates
& clings like boredom. There is gray dust
blurring bedroom mirrors, gilded dust swirling
in pieces of sunlight
falling through the broken ceiling,
& the waltz of dust on the floorof the condemned dance hall.
Dust silvers fingertips holding an old book.
Dust on piano keys, on white tablecloths,
windowsills, bare lightbulbs
that now throw a dusty yellow light.
Dust that sleeps under a blanket of dust.
Dust dulling the rust-freckled barbed wire,
fallen down, keeping out no one, keeping no one in.
Wind dervishes the desert, & there is dust
thick as thirst in a cowboy's throat.
After a flurry, dust is the calm
on everything:
in the ocher of a dry riverbed, a lizard
scribbles his tail in dust; dust fills the tracks
& denies that coyote passed this way;
a sun-bleached dust furs cow skulls.
There is the dust of the dead—
& in winter, snow,
the cold shadow of dust.
_______________
