Published 23 Jun 2020
Poems for Contemplation: "Dusting"
Poet Marilyn Nelson offers a meditation on the ordinary in this selection for our Summer 2020 Poetry Series.
By Marilyn NelsonA blog post Women Scholars and Professionals
This summer The Well is featuring a series of poems by women. Ruth Goring invites you to approach them curiously and meditatively.
"Dusting"
Thank you for these tinyparticles of ocean salt,pearl-necklace viruses,winged protozoans:for the infinite,intricate shapesof submicroscopicliving things.
For algae sporesand fungus spores,bonded by vitalmutual genetic cooperation,spreading theirinseparable livesfrom equator to pole.
My hand, my arm,make sweeping circles.Dust climbs the ladder of light.For this infernal, endless chore,for these eternal seeds of rain:Thank you. For dust.
© from The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems
You can purchase Marilyn Nelson's works at her website.
Photo by Travel Photographer from StockSnap.
Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of more than 20 books and chapbooks for adults and children. Her critically acclaimed books for young adults include A Wreath for Emmett Till and the ground breaking Carver: A Life in Poems, a Newbery Honor Book. Of Marilyn’s nine poetry collections for adults, The Homeplace won the 1992 Annisfield-Wolf Award; and The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems received the 1998 Poets’ Prize, the PEN Winship Award, and the Lenore Marshall Prize. A three-time finalist for the National Book Award, her many honors include the Frost Medal, the Poetry Society of America’s award for “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry,” and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. A professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut, she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and was Poet Laureate of Connecticut, 2001– 2006.