RESEARCH QUESTIONS ABOUT EPHEMERALITY
Dust languaging stone, sifting over robes,
becomes what can't be cleaned away:
removal would damage the colors, jade and stately
red on a shoe's underside, peeking through
pleats. How many more years
before the grimy brownish grey,
not scrubbed and swept, cloaks the colors
completely? The question makes my lungs catch,
but this covering is a kind of care.
What, really, will be lost? My child,
told of the extinction of dinosaurs and querulous,
whispers at a dinner party, All these bones
in the ground are still alive. He would
not care for these statues, whose placards
state their losses: a pagoda from
a palm, a heart from thorax and then a palm,
and my favorite, the long eyebrows held up
by hands, one positioned so as not
to cut the line of sight, meant to suggest
longevity. I have strayed somewhat from
the question, or perhaps the question
is: where does dust go?
What is the scale? Or perhaps
the question was covered before I could
write it down. In the afternoon,
when I return to the dark room, a honeybee
lies on the stone floor by the writing
desk; when I return after dinner, it is gone.
TYPO
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