Sand from the Gobi Desert blows across Saskatchewan, becomes the irritation in an eye. So say the scientists who separate the smallest pollen from its wings of grit, identify the origin and name.

You have to wonder where the dust from these fields ends up: Zimbabwe, Fiji, on the row of shoes outside a mosque in Istanbul, on the green rise of a belly in the Jade Museum in Angkor Wat?

And what of our breath, grey hair freed from a comb, the torn
threads of shadows?

Just now the salt from a woman’s tears settles finely its invisible kiss on my upper lip. She’s been crying in Paris on the street that means
"Middle of the Day," though it’s night there, and she doesn’t want
the day to come.

Would it comfort her to know another, halfway round the world,
can taste her grief? Another would send her, if she could, the rare flakes of snow falling here before the sunrise, snow that barely fleeces the brown back of what’s too dry to be a field of wheat, and winter’s almost passed. Snow on her lashes.

What of apple blossoms, my father’s ashes, small scraps of sadness that slip out of reach? Is it comforting to know the wind never travels empty?

A sparrow in the Alhambra’s arabesques rides the laughter spilling from our kitchen, the smell of garlic makes the dust delicious where and where it falls.