by Nolo Segundo

(With a nod to the Bard)

We are the moving dust, 
we are the breathing dust,
we are the seeing dust,
we are the living dust.

But how, you ask, and rightly
so, can dust fall asleep,
dreaming of places unknown
and lovers unmet—how can
dust imagine whole worlds
and love with one heart for
60 winters and 60 summers?

And do the notes that stir life
come also from dust, just a
little dust, and nothing more?
When the music is played 
and dust dances with dust,
and dust laughs with dust,
and soon dust loves dust,
can dust ever understand 
the paradox of its own 
being, from dust to dust?

Not until the winds comes,
the warm winds of Eternity,
will dust be blown away,
leaving the unseen soul 
alive, to walk and breathe
and dance and love, bathed
forever in the dustless Light.

Nolo Segundo, pen name of L.J.Carber, in his 70s, became a published poet in over 80 literary journals/anthologies in 7 countries (such as Heart of Flesh, Ekstasis, Time of Singing) and 2 trade book collections: The Enormity of Existence [2020] and Of Ether and Earth [2021]. The titles, like much of his work, reflect the awareness he’s had since having an NDE whilst almost drowning in a Vermont river: that he has—is—a consciousness that predates birth and survives death, what poets and other people once called the soul. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2022 by Spirit Fire Review, he’s retired from teaching English/ESL in America, Japan, Taiwan and Cambodia (leaving there before the time of the Killing Fields), who has been married 42 years to a smart and beautiful Taiwanese woman.