ALIVE AGAIN

I may cough with the dust of generations
inhaled to rattle in my lungs, lingering
with each breath—behind the herds of cattle

since the eighteen-fifties mixed and laid
to rest, becoming all the grass and browse
they could digest—or I may be this old dirt

now stirred within my flesh to become one
of Stafford’s precious clods compressed
with sweet memories well before my time

expires. Rain upon the dust, grass to flesh,
all the green springs blooming with calves—
cows and men—dust of dust alive again.