Out of the Dust Read Online Free PDF Page A

roof.
    I place a wet cloth over my nose to keep
    from breathing dust
    and wipe the grime tracings from around my mouth,
    and shiver, thinking of Ma.
    I am kept company by the sound of my heart
    drumming.
    Restless,
    I tangle in the dusty sheets,
    sending the sand flying,
    cursing the grit against my skin,
    between my teeth,
    under my lids,
    swearing I’ll leave this forsaken place.
    I hear the first drops.
    Like the tapping of a stranger
    at the door of a dream,
    the rain changes everything.
    It strokes the roof,
    streaking the dusty tin,
    ponging,
    a concert of rain notes,
    spilling from gutters,
    gushing through gullies,
    soaking into the thirsty earth outside.
    Monday morning dawns,
    cloaked in mist.
    I button into my dress, slip on my sweater,
    and push my way off the porch,
    sticking my face into the fog,
    into the moist skin of the fog.
    The sound of dripping surrounds me as I
    walk to town.
    Soaked to my underwear,
    I can’t bear to go
    through the schoolhouse door,
    I want only to stand in the rain.
    Monday afternoon,
    Joe De La Flor brushes mud from his horse,
    Mr. Kincannon hires my father
    to pull his Olds out of the muck on Route 64.
    And later,
    when the clouds lift,
    the farmers, surveying their fields,
    nod their heads as
    the frail stalks revive,
    everyone, everything, grateful for this moment,
    free of the
    weight of dust.
    January 1935

Haydon P. Nye
    Haydon P. Nye died this week.
    I knew him to wave,
    he liked the way I played piano.
    The newspaper said when Haydon first came
    he could see only grass,
    grass and wild horses and wolves roaming.
    Then folks moved in and sod got busted
    and bushels of wheat turned the plains to gold,
    and Haydon P. Nye
    grabbed the Oklahoma Panhandle in his fist
    and held on.
    By the time the railroad came in
    on land Haydon sold them,
    the buffalo and the wild horses had gone.
    Some years
    Haydon Nye saw the sun dry up his crop,
    saw the grasshoppers chew it down,
    but then came years of rain
    and the wheat thrived,
    and his pockets filled,
    and his big laugh came easy.
    They buried Haydon Nye on his land,
    busted more sod to lay down his bones.
    Will they sow wheat on his grave,
    where the buffalo
    once grazed?
    January 1935

Scrubbing Up Dust
    Walking past the Crystal Hotel
    I saw Jim Martin down on his knees.
    He was scraping up mud that had
    dried to crust
    after the rain mixed with dust Sunday last.
    When I got home
    I took a good look at the steps
    and the porch and the windows.
    I saw them with Ma’s eyes and thought about
    how she’d been haunting me.
    I thought about Ma,
    who would’ve washed clothes,
    beaten furniture,
    aired rugs,
    scrubbed floors,
    down on her knees,
    brush in hand,
    breaking that mud
    like the farmers break sod,
    always watching over her shoulder
    for the next duster to roll in.
    My stubborn ma,
    she’d be doing it all
    with my brother Franklin to tend to.
    She never could stand a mess.
    My father doesn’t notice the dried mud.
    Least he never tells me,
    not that he tells me much of anything these days.
    With Ma gone,
    if the mud’s to be busted,
    the job falls to me.
    It isn’t the work I hate,
    the knuckle-breaking work of beating mud out of
    every blessed thing,
    but every day
    my fingers and hands
    ache so bad. I think
    I should just let them rest,
    let the dust rest,
    let the world rest.
    But I can’t leave it rest,
    on account of Ma,
haunting.
    January 1935

Outlined by Dust
    My father stares at me
    while I sit across from him at the table,
    while I wash dishes in the basin,
    my back to him,
    the picked and festered bits of my hands in agony.
    He stares at me
    as I empty the wash water at the roots
    of Ma’s apple trees.
    He spends long days
    digging for the electric-train folks
    when they can use him,
    or working here,
    nursing along the wheat,
    what there is of it,
    or digging the pond.
    He sings sometimes under his breath,
    even now,
    even after so much sorrow.
    He sings a man’s song,
    deep with what has happened to us.
    It