Dust
Greg Kosmicki
Dust coated men in from the fields like skin.
We breathed it in, the younger ones of us,
No masks, eyes only spared by goggles to
Brand me with the same raccoonish look dad
Wore, years before, when I was small and saw
Inside the black-painted tin lunchbox where
My mother stashed two ham sandwiches, thick
Around as tree stumps, wrapped in paper waxed
To be translucent and crinkly. Coffee
In the steel “Thermos jug,” my dad called it,
With its shiny inside-outside mirror
Stowed in the swinging tin lid and held there
By that gray metal clip he’d snap in place,
Then close the lid over the sandwiches,
The magic apple, red pack of Pall Malls,
And grin. That strange language—“Toodle-oo,” “Toods,”
And he was out the door that I walked in
Fifteen years later, wearing the same dust.
Greg Kosmicki's most recent collection of poems, We Eat The Earth was published by WSC Press in 2022. His previous collection, It's As Good Here as it Gets Anywhere was a finalist for the 2017 High Plains Book Award. He is retired and lives with his wife in Alpine, California.