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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Your Sunday Poem

This by W.S. Merwin, from “180 more, Extraordinary Poems for Every Day,” selected and edited by Billy Collins.

To the Dust of the Road

And in the morning you are up again

with the way leading through you for a while

longer if the wind is motionless when

the cars reach where the asphalt ends a mile

or so below the main road and the wave

you rise into is different every time

and you are one with it until you have

made your way up to the top of your climb

and brightened in that moment of that day

and then you turn as when you rose before

in fire or wind from the ends of the earth

to pause there and you seem to drift away

on into nothing to lie down once more

until another breath brings you to birth

3 comments:

Sewertoons AKA Lynette Tornatzky said...

Wow, kinda heavy. It's like so many people.....

Churadogs said...

I thought it was a lovely description of dust clouds, also alluding to "dust to dust" from earth to sky and back down to earth, the great cycle.

Sewertoons AKA Lynette Tornatzky said...

Guess I took it a step further into the dust-to-dust biblical realm! Your find was indeed lovely.

Here is a poem I found recently and that influenced my thinking:

eww
by Zag

when i die
my atoms will come undone;
i'll be space dust once again.

the wind will carry me;
scatter me everywhere;
like dandelions in springtime.

i'll visit worlds and alien moons;
it will be so damn poetic-
until i land on your sandwich.


Not so lovely I guess.... but I laughed out loud.