a poem by Jane Clark Scharl

The Swiffer glides, exactly as advertised,
Smoothly around the floor. I am in awe,
Or an infomercial. Beneath the bureau, surprised,
The dust bunnies have been busy,

And run like Auden’s years around the room.
Where does it come from, this trash
That, before I view it on the broom,
I have not seen, though born in my very home?

The Swiffer drags to the middle of the bare
Judicial tiles a specimen. I stoop and there,
Drawn in lines of long dark hair,
Is myself, in bits, disintegrating slowly in an

Endless crematorium, and all round in piles,
The rest of me: a hair, a lash, a million
Million discarded cells on the tiles
In an intricate heap. I am there, spun in webs

As delicate as a spider’s, but more useless,
A necessary decadence of a creation
That crowns itself not with happiness,
But with knowledge, just as in sweeping

The dust from my floor
I see and know myself more.