Читать книгу The Quarry - Dan Lechay - Страница 14

South Siders

Not the linden pollen, whose spermy being

dripped, each June, on windshields and collected

on people’s hats, nor the annual,

almost welcome advent through

our windows of box elder bugs—their bodies

drifting beneath our beds; not cob-

webs, dustmice, molds that made our houses

and crabgrass-pimpled, mole-dug yards appear

animal-friendly: but the fact we

lived at the edge of town. A subtle

dust rose from the furrowed fields,

from loess deposits, seams of shale, twelve decades’

leavings of cows and chickens, from worms’ turnings,

to film our mirrors, alter even the taste of

soup, and darken, if imperceptibly

at first, the faces we took with us to school.