Tomorrow’s Dust
by Odin Roark

Deniability is not an option.

From shedding skin cells and hair
to consumerism’s byproducts,
we contribute dust everywhere.

How ironic then this assumed power over matter
our narcissism deluding our thinking: “Us” against “It.”

Yet, even as we broom and dust away traces of It,
we deny the obvious,
that we too are one with It,
merely awaiting our own rate of decay,
to enjoin actuality’s continuance.

Might it also be that underlying this
obsession to keep one’s house in order—
to maintain our surroundings in pristine condition—
is an inverse desire to flirt with infallible death,
while in pursuit of one’s precarious life?

And could this mania be our unwillingness
to accept the morass of dying,
of becoming one with a universe whose archived dust
is but testimony to the impervious essence of truth,
and the infinite star-filled existence?

If only we might spend more time with the wonder
of energy’s perpetual motion,
where cause forever brings effect,
variables become unreal without constants,
death ceases to have meaning without life,
and whether of baby-making inclination, or sand castle building,
engine repair, or Rolex design,
creation’s nature is inexorably but a preamble to
tomorrow’s dust in waiting.