Lyrics What Dust Is - Kiran Leonard

What Dust Is

They are together in a small brown bed
One takes the other by the arm and asks what dust is
The slow hum of moving traffic
Outside, and the sun stretching in through a mirror-frame
Gives pause to a silly question
And the other sits up, looks beside them and laughs
As light passes over their skin
Through a line of patient motorists in their mists
Their bodies are just like seashells
And the trees on the street sound just like the sea
And one just about spots, in the beams
Floating in, the rough specks of the heavy day
We are living at a distance
The right-now coils in the glow and licks its fur
And behind-it is unthreading
Beyond the spotlights, the threads run, into the soil to wait for us
It’s night now, the other is sleeping
Couples leave restaurants, roll their cigarettes
One is looking, hears but barely sees
Is following something, that’s flowing underneath
Now one shrieks and clasps at the dark
And the land speaks
The other wakes now, turns towards the commotion
One is groping the ground, tracing an outline
Through the thick silhouette of daylight
Traced topographic airs
Stream of old embers, now heading backwards
To the roots of our years, then climbing—