Dust - If You Must

Dust if you Must
by
Rose Milligan

Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better
To paint a picture, or write a letter,
Bake a cake, or plant a seed;
Ponder the difference between want and need?

Dust if you must, but there's not much time,
With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb;
Music to hear, and books to read;
Friends to cherish, and life to lead.

Dust if you must, but the world's out there
With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair;
A flutter of snow, a shower of rain,
This day will not come around again.

Dust if you must, but bear in mind,
Old age will come and it's not kind.
And when you go (and go you must)
You, yourself, will make more dust.

That poem sums me up. I don’t live in a messy muddle, but I won’t lose any sleep over dusty shelves that can wait until tomorrow, or the next day. There is more to life. There’s a saying about ‘boring women have tidy houses’, something like that. It might be on a fridge magnet. I declare, I am not boring.

It is a bit disconcerting to read that household dust is composed of 20 – 50% dead skin cells. The rest is hair, fur, pollen, fibres from fabric and various other materials in the environment. I won’t dash for the anti-bacterial spray and a good cloth just yet. I’ll finish writing first, unless I see a dust mite or start to feel itchy. If it’s true, the layer of house dust doesn’t look any worse after five years. I’m not going to purposely run that experiment. I admit to being a teeny weeny bit embarrassed recently when we needed help to move a large sideboard and hatch style unit. The top surface of the hatch could have been a five year science exercise, but I know it wasn’t as long as that, I promise.

Soon, some remedial building work will create more than the average layer of dust. I’ll wait until it is all complete before I clean up.

Outside, the dry weather has made everywhere dusty. We spent the weekend enjoying some caravan time at one of our favourite places in Garstang. Passing vehicles, as slow as they were on the site, churned up powdery clouds with the dryness of the road tracks. Cars looked like they’d been through a sand storm.

Now, I’d like some help, please. Who wrote the poem ‘Dust if you Must’ credited above to Rose Milligan, but I also have the same poem in a book by Pam Ayres, showing her as having the copyright?

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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