Another Rural Sonnet

It's been a while since I've posted rural poetry. Lately we've been cleaning a lot.

A lot.

And let me tell you this place is dirty.

Really dirty.

But I'm sure that has nothing to do with why we don't get much company.   Nothing at all. 

Or why, perhaps, we don't invite people over very often.    Nothing at all. 

[Ahem]


Rural sonnet number whatever....


Ode to a Dirty House

Accumulated dirt from twenty years
And more, of living on a gravel road—
[A rolling cloud of dust likely appears
When every auto, bike, dog, cat or toad
Goes by when things dry out]—At any rate,
That dirt fills every pore of this old house.
It covers everything. Our real estate
Will soon be mostly in than out. I grouse
Each time I clean the tops of shelves unseen
For years. Each surface traps and glues right down
Vast swaths of gritty, grimy, anti-sheen.
The cobwebs make it worse because they’re brown
With gunk. I’d keep ahead of all that grime
But I’d be doing housework ALL the time.

A Little Dusty

These oak leaves are on our road.  They are not a fancy variegated type.    They're just plain dusty.

Everything is dusty.    The grass is dusty.   The gardens are dusty.   The cars are dusty.  The porch is dusty.   The house is dusty.   The trees are dusty.   The dirt is dusty. 

These are the conditions that produced the Dust Bowl of the 1920s.  Regularly disturbed soil and hot dry weather.    The county comes by to grade our road a few times a year - to get the potholes out of it and to smooth out the washboards.   They dump more gravel if need be.    Sometimes they make it better, sometimes they just rearrange the mess.   Always, they make more dust.