This Dust

Driven by drought, steady as breath, you can measure
your days by the drift. Gray grit risen from too-dry earth,
golden pollen sifted in, liminal salt off harbor spray. Now
comes a black smutch, trace of ashes from Oregon homes
burnt in blazes so big they change weather. Lofted to wind-flow
strong as a river, loss is carried three thousand miles to fall
here, on my Boston porch, where I am dusting again.

When Mount St. Helens blasted open, I still lived at home
out West. Ashes fell for weeks, piled inches deep. The lighter kind
flew clear around the world, and when at last the air let it land,
it must have looked like common dust. But that dark-fall gusted
from a living mountain, heart-heat of the Earth. Our mother,
elated by the eruption, draped her fridge with photos of it,
cheerily shook ash from garden plants to nurture roots.

Ten years ago on a different mountain, my brother and I
let her go. An updraft lifted some of her shining, sparkling
like fairy dust, a jolt of joy to thread our grief. Who could say
how far she traveled, or where she finally settled? Now I let go
the dusting cloth, slide bare palms along the rails, then brush
what’s there to the garden below. I do not think of dust to dust,
but sorrow to wind, soul to soil. And all the ways we are carried.