"There's never an end to dust
and dusting," my aunt would say
as her rag, like a thunderhead,
scudded across the yellow oak
of her little house. There she lived
seventy years with a ball
of compulsion closed in her fist,
and an elbow that creaked and popped
like a branch in a storm. Now dust
is her hands and dust her heart.
There's never an end to it.
Carrie
Carrie
By Ted Kooser
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Fall 1978) p. 256
Biography
Ted Kooser is a former US Poet Laureate and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. He is a retired life insurance executive and teaches part-time at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His list of jobs includes paper carrier, agricultural fieldwork, sign painter, high school teacher, insurance executive, and part-time professor.