The dust people

they had been sitting
at the front door too long

whittled their fingers to the bone
in front of chunks of earth
matted with roots that once
grew beneath their feet

and now who knows where
house and clothes end
and ground and skin start

consumed the soil they have
and traded it for a thing
finer than any sand that has
measured any amount of time

all that measures their time
spent inhaling their home
are memories quickly savored
in the brief moments the
wind decides to catch its...

breath is as elusive as
the rains leaving a people
to bathe themselves only
in their sweat and tears

upon year after years
the fence posts bitterly
disappear by the hands
of gritty air and locust teeth

and houses and barns
are taken by large metal
blades backed by suits
and numerical hearts

that scatter a people to
makeshift mobile lives and
canvas tents where Zion and
the promised land drip off of
saturated evangelical tongues

yet the promised land was
theirs underneath their fingernails
and deep within their lungs

it piled up at their front doors
as the wind tried to bury the past