Dust Poem

By Philip Jenks

The idea was.

At least in theory,

Dust was a bad thing.

There was a bowl

Of it. At another

Point in time

The conclusion

Was reached

That everything

Was of it.

No season, no

Nothing to measure

To measure against

So no love or hate.

Left us without no

Moorings or so my

Father told me

Vanity tables of it?

Isn’t that what a vanity

Table is for?

What happens to

As its failings accrue?

No mission but to be clean.

Of itself.

But existing (time)

And problems there –

The problem of now

We are back here.

See the whole dust problem’s

No measure.

All’s dust, check.

All’s virtuous, check.

So why not live it up then?

And thus, YOLO etc. etc.

{These fok whirr pretty smart.

Thing is, even in

The dust bowl, the

Idea, a very American

One was that something

Wasn’t dust.

I wasn’t.

The Bowl wasn’t.

The dust wasn’t.

Since Ecclesiastes,

Been trying this one on.

(how’s that working out for you?)

One needn’t be geologically

Or for that matter

Psychologically trained to

Begin unpacking the diffident

And sometimes strained

Relation the nation holds with

All that is vanity.

Copyright Credit: Philip Jenks, "Dust Poem." Copyright © 2017 by Philip Jenks. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow, a partnership between the Poetry Foundation and the WFMT Radio Network.

Source: PoetryNow (2017)