POEM
Key of Dust
Breathing in, I breathe the skin of trees,
the husk of rocky kernels cracking,
slagging off the shroud of centuries.
Into my lungs, a stream of atoms comes:
bits of Rome, bung-hole fillers—that
mighty Alexander, the scarce-bearded Caesar!
I am all that I am not, and I am not
what I shall become—who knows?
Not I, and the less I know
the further I fly, thistle-downed,
through golden-light unleafing, the grassy
blade, plucked up to make a crowing caw.
Breathing out, I breathe these latest words,
the cells of heart and lung in every vowel,
flittering pulse of inner ear,
trail of dust and ink.
“Key of Dust” from Coming Back to the Body by Joyce Sutphen. © 2000 by Joyce Sutphen. Used by permission of Joyce Sutphen and the publisher, Holy Cow! Press.
Source: Coming Back to the Body (Holy Cow! Press, 2000)
