Handful of Dust

Oh, the memories ... how they come flooding back during quiet moments ... away from the keyboard ... no TV blaring in the background.

Today's poem deals ... seemingly ... with a single memory ... a single day ... a single set of circumstances ... and, when I wrote it, I was thinking about a specific day which stood out in memory.

Looking at it now, I think it's more than that. It must be. There were many times that I looked wistfully toward the crest of that hill, wondered what lay beyond ... wanted to find out ... wondered if I ever would.

Well, eventually I did. Oh, did I ever!

But now I seem to be rooted more firmly than ever in those beginnings ... dealing with those bittersweet memories ... finding that the emphasis is more on the second portion of "bittersweet" than on the first.

The poem:

HANDFUL OF DUST

I stood watching a breeze

moving toward me through

hazy green rows of corn,

listened to it overhead

whispering its secrets

to a wafer-dry box elder,

saw it picking up just

a handful of dust,

twirling it, letting it

settle quickly back

to the hoof-pocked soil,

remember thinking

that I might follow,

off somewhere beyond

those barren hills,

but stood drinking

from a rusty tin cup,

dribbled the dregs

on my thirsting toes,

went padding back

where I’d always be.

© 2002

(originally published in Capper's; now part of a manuscript in search of a publisher)

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Today's word: twirling