To Dust
The mountain keeps no ledger of our names;
it wears the centuries like weathered wool,
while we are footprints written on the tide,
brief alphabets the evening learns to erase.
The oak that shaded lovers and wandering saints
lets each leaf loosen without protest.
Its golden whispers spiral to the earth,
small prayers returning to the book of roots.
We gather houses from splinters of hope,
brick our laughter into stubborn walls,
hang portraits where yesterday smiles forever—
yet dust rehearses quietly in every corner,
a patient sculptor polishing all possession
into the color of forgotten roads.
Time is an invisible river
that carries castles and cradles alike.
Its current smooths the sharp edges of triumph,
rounds grief into silent stones,
and teaches even iron
the soft language of rust.
Once, I believed my heart
was a lantern no darkness could swallow.
Now I know it is a candle in cathedral wind,
its trembling flame made beautiful
because it cannot bargain with forever.
Still, the dawn scatters silver
across the shoulders of the sea.
Birdsong stitches morning to the sky.
Children chase butterflies
as if joy itself had learned to wear wings,
and old hands cradle sunlight
like water cupped from a sacred spring.
Perhaps that is the secret.
Not to defy the dust,
nor curse the slow surrender of the flesh,
but to bloom while the seasons remember our fragrance;
to leave kindness like wildflowers
along another traveler's path;
to love until the soul becomes
lighter than the ashes it must one day leave behind.
For dust is not merely an ending—
it is the quiet grammar of beginnings,
the seed's dark cradle,
the potter's waiting clay,
the soft brown page
upon which eternity writes again.
And when the last wind
gathers my scattered hours
into its invisible hands,
let it carry not my bones alone,
but every smile I planted,
every tear I understood,
every hope I dared to kindle.
Then I shall not fear
becoming dust,
for even dust remembers
the stars from which it came.
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