P O E T R Y
Dust
MICHAEL HETTICH
W
HEN she says we are filled with water, like coffee or rain, as though to remind me of something she thinks I should already know, I wonder
how rain, which is water falling, can be said to be filled with what it is, which is water. She tells me I’ m forgetting about dust, which is what we are
when we take away the water. And water never dies, she says then, or stops returning to itself in the ocean, in the sky, in lakes and rivers
and snowfall— in our eyes for that matter, and in our bodies: The sweet water of love she sings, pouring the dark tea, as we talk of other things:
the age of this air we’ re breathing, who might have breathed it before us, as the fragrances of henna and jasmine that hang in our garden— after
days of rain— sneak in through the cracks in our windows and doors, until the whole room is vivid with the spaces between things, through which we might escape.
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