Where We Moved To (on the occasion of our new address)

I sweep and you find fault with sweeping:
I have failed corners.  Dust remains.
But in your cup the tea is steeping,
The train shudders the windowpanes.
The tea is steeping, sending up
Its steam, leaking its amber ink
Into the crazing of the cup.
So much dust.  It makes me think
How the skin cells softly rain,
Invisibly, upon the floor
Which we shall have to sweep again.
I cough.  We’re so close to the tracks
Both sides are wrong.  The window glass
So old it ripples.  All is flux.
Windows trickle like molasses.
The train, pacing to and fro,
Rails against its ties, a bore,
But like a river, it must go
Along the path it went before.
The liquor of your tea grows cold
Before you drink it.  How erratic
The motes sway in the rippled gold
To the radio’s sweet static.
I am almost done with sweeping.
You nod, even though dust remains.
The cough returns.  The clock is keeping
Time to the keening of the trains.
The last broom stroke—the dust balls bustle.
I take my breath in jagged sherds.
And in my lungs I hear a rustle
Like a shuffling of cards,
A fortune teller at her Tarot
Telling the future: dust tomorrow.

© A. E. Stallings—This poem first appeared in Poetry