Housekeeper’s lament

[Billy]

Housekeeper’s lament

i sweep it up wipe it up suck it up it returns
come morning they return they don’t
think about dust where it comes from how
it falls through air unnoticed settles
high and low what would happen to their sunlit
lives if I wasn’t here my Bible tells me we
were made from dust will return to it that
makes sense to me the whole world is churning
out dust God’s creation wearing down to dust
i’m God’s helper moving it around this is holy
stuff I’m brushing into dustpans dumping
into plastic sacks pouring down toilets
and drains might be somebody’s kid
ever seen dust been lying there for years
it begins to clump together maybe
that’s the way we were in the beginning
millions of years of dust clumping together
sometimes I imagine it to be the waste
of great and little thoughts all that thinking
has to produce something to throw back
on the pile seems to be the way things work
nothing or no one can escape it that’s you
and me ground up and gathering in the cracks
on the windowsills behind the files under
the machinery and furniture on top of
the bookcases i’m here every night
making sure it doesn’t foul up the works
yes i know about dust things others would
never think of but at the end of the day
i go home like them flush the toilet turn on
the shower wash dust down the drain fall
asleep sifting through sieves of morning light

[BobBradshaw]

Good voice. I really like this persona poem you've found up your sleeve. Can't wait for you to shake others out.

[RamanathanSiva]

Billy

David Shulman speaks about 'dust' from our Classical texts. Please google and read, and also listen to a couple of lectures. Avenali Lecture with David Shulman: The Inner Life of Dust.
https://youtu.be/zXaD93SZ4VY

Siva

[Billy]

Thanks Bob

Siva, enjoyed video. Very much my understanding of things.
Did you like my poem. I wrote it 10 or 12 years ago. Recently made some small changes.

[Kenneth2816]

I like it. Good contrast between dust as filth vs. the material we are made of

[Michael (MV)]

Hi Billy,

IF this was a poem in search of a superscript/epigraph, I hear the lyrics of Joni Mitchell as sung/played by CSNY:

We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion-year-old carbon
And we got to get ourselves
Back to the garden




Michael (MV)

[Billy]

Thanks Ken, Michael