Eventually we will be dust together

Promise of Blue Horses

A blue horse turns into a streak of lightning,
then the sun -
relating the difference between sadness
and the need to praise that which makes us joyful,

I can't calculate how the earth tips hungrily
toward the sun - then soaks up rain -
or the density of this unbearable need
to be next to you.

It's a palpable thing - this earth philosophy
and familiar in the dark, like your skin under my hand.
We are a small earth. It's no simple thing.
Eventually we will be dust together;

can be used to make a house, to stop
a flood or grow food
for those who will never remember who we were,
or know that we loved fiercely.

Laughter and sadness eventually become the same song
turning us toward the nearest star -
a star constructed of eternity and elements of dust barely visible
in the twilight as you travel east.

I run with the blue horses of electricity who surround the heart
and imagine a promise made
when no promise was possible.

Joy Harjo, 'How We Become Human'