Nolo Segundo

Quintessence of dust

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

sixty winters and sixty 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 come,

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 retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia]  L.j. Carber, 77, became a published poet and essayist in his 8th decade in some 200 literary journals in 15 countries and 3 poetry collections published by Cyberwit: The Enormity of Existence [2020]; Of Ether and Earth [2021]; and Soul Songs [2022]. These titles reflect the awareness he gained over 50 years ago when he had an NDE whilst nearly drowning in a Vermont river: That he has--IS--a consciousness predating birth and surviving death, what poets since the Psalmists and Plato have called the soul.