Dust

Time to clean again, to cleanse
the kitchen and its cabinets
as many decades ago my mother
had done, year by year, as I watched,
too short, too young to help, too likely
to break the fragility of clay or glass.

My turn, now, to pay witness to
what accumulates along the edges
of each cabinet door, across each
horizontal space, coated with
the oils of daily meals steamed
upwards towards heaven’s ceiling.

Dust falls, moment by moment,
here caught and trapped in layers
sticking resolutely, resisting all
but the most vigorous of scrubbing—
cleansing and purifying the residue
of our daily appetites, our indulgence.

So be it, whatever lies before us,
vast and level, like desert plains
reaching to the horizon and beyond,
carries its layers of dust, its testament
to each passing year of promise and
failure—the fate of conscience

and consciousness. So be it, we still
strive for some perfection, return
to the cleansing effort to make space
light and pure again, as if we did not
know our clenched hands and ragged
fingers are, themselves, the dust we fear.

Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing, and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. He has published poetry in a number of journals, as well as creative nonfiction, short fiction, and flash fiction. He has recently completed a book-length manuscript of poetry dealing with issues of medicine, illness, and loss (Vital Signs).