Ed’s Corner

Fitting in with the name of our newsletter, have you noticed more dust lately due to the lack of rainfall? In the house but also outside. Raking leaves will will stir up little swirls of dust, but if you really want to see mini-dust storms, watch what happens when the leaf blowers come to town, or to your own house or a neighbor’s.

So for a little ‘Ode to Dust’, we share with you the following:

The Us in Dust

right there in the middle
of the little word ‘dust’
we see the ‘u’ and ‘s’
and together they are ‘us’

we’ve heard from Joni Mitchell
that a good part of what we are
is dust that landed on the earth
from distant exploding stars

so while ‘us’ is in dust
there’s more to the word
the dust is also in us –
the other way, absurd

but wait just a minute
‘us’ in dust is true, too
for every time you sweep the floor
you are sweeping you

our skin is made of cells that shed
science tells us thousands per day
so every time you sweep the floor
you’re sweeping yourself away

so being ‘swept away’
or even ‘off your feet’
may now mean something different
that doesn’t feel so sweet