Practicing Human

What If We're Dust?

January 27, 2022 Cory Muscara Episode 529
Practicing Human
What If We're Dust?
Show Notes

In this episode, we discuss a poem by Li-Young Lee. In the episode, I make a mistake by saying the poem is titled "So, we're dust" when in fact it's titled "To Hold":

So we’re dust. In the meantime, my wife and I
make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight,
measuring by eye as it falls into alignment
between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I’m lucky,
she’ll remember a recent dream and tell me.

One day we’ll lie down and not get up.
One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

Until then, we’ll go on learning to recognize
what we love, and what it takes
to tend what isn’t for our having.
So often, fear has led me
to abandon what I know I must relinquish
in time. But for the moment,
I’ll listen to her dream,
and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling
more and more detail into the light
of a joint and fragile keeping.