Pollen
Like dust, it was everywhere,
a fine bright storm
billowing over barns
and feedlots, making
all the livestock shine,
the horses one color.
And for weeks it was
our weather, it’s what
we wore, what
my mother kept sweeping
out into the air,
and what the air
kept giving back, what
long after dark
I’d pass through
pedaling home, and home
what I always wanted
to find, to have it there
each morning when I woke,
shimmering
on floors, mirrors.
Robert Hedin is the author, translator, and editor of two dozen books of poetry and prose, most recently At the Great Door of Morning: Selected Poems and Translations (Copper Canyon Press) and, as co-editor, The Uncommon Speech of Paradise: Poems on the Art of Poetry (White Pine Press). Read more.