At some time or other the dust will change its mind.
It will cease to be dust.
It will start over again.
It will reconstitute itself,
become skin,
become a fingernail or perhaps
a heart beating slowly.
Whatever, let’s keep our eyes open
in case we miss the moment
of the dust’s rebellion,
and our ears open
for the small whisper of
‘I’m fed up being dust,’ or
‘I long to be an apple polished
against the sleeve
of a child I’d forgotten!’
It might be the dust buried beneath frost speaking,
or the dust of old machinery,
or the melancholic dust of friends
who believed in dying.
It might even be the dust of the moths
God left uninvented.
Against a pile of such dust I have weighed
the likelihood of you returning.