Dust

There will always be dust

That is one thing that never changes

Dust at the beginning of the universe 

Dust at the end

Even though I know most things

I will ever experience 

Are infinite

The brevity of myself

Makes the infinity of other things seem sure

Like the playground out behind the elementary school

And the grand maple tree 

With a sap bucket on it in spring 

And us sitting in its branches in fall

Like the spark of a friendship 

Or a love

That made sense of this brevity 

Of this dust

Dust

We are made of dust

But whether sin

Or stardust

Neither the greatest scientist

Or the niftiest magicians can tell you

The infinity of the things a human life touches

Are far from sure

Shake me

When I wind back into town 

On a late summer day

And find the rusting old swing set replaced

The maple tree 

Cut down from sickness

And a fathomless breath of air

Between me 

And you

Maybe there is no either or

My dust mixing into yours

Into the universe

Sin and Stardust

Existing in the same smile

In the same 

Breath

So close 

We could never tell the difference

So close

We cannot pull them apart 

There will always be dusty roads

That is one thing that never changes

At the end of my life

And at the beginning