Dusty Skies Lyrics

by Cindy Walker (recorded by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys)

Dusty skies I can't see nothing in sight
Good old Dan you'll have to guide me right
If we lose our way the cattle will stray
And we’ll lose them all tonight
Cause all of the grass and water's gone
We'll have to keep the cattle moving on

Tommy Duncan

Sand blowing I just can't breathe in this air
I thought it would soon be clear and fair
But dust storms played hell with land and folks as well
Got to be moving somewhere
Hate to leave the old ranch so bare
I've got to be moving somewhere

Get along doggies we're moving off of this range
I never thought as how I'd make the change
The blue skies have failed so we're on our last trail
Underneath these dusty skies
These ain't tears in my eyes
Just sand from these dusty skies

Its been reported that Tommy Duncan, singer for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, cried the first time he sang these lyrics.

Rain Dust

Dusty, organic, artificial, mineral, radioactive, calcium, acid, lead, toxic, particles and molecules of dirt in drops
Wind blown from deserts, volcanoes, power plants, automobile emissions, fossil fuels, agricultural crops, droughts, or other cosmic, galactic, and terrestrial sources

Picked up in the Sahara sands, Africa, Mars, China, Asia, Arabia, and other locales
Colored in red, yellow, white, brown, ashen gray, blood, blue, black, green, and more
Suspended as nuclei seeding rain, ice, snow, or other atmospheric aerosols
In storm clouds with lightning, soot, mud, gas, microbes, thunder, and other debris
Particles of condensation entrain pollutants in micro-physical climates of air defeating control or suppression
Alien to our understanding and threatening to our lives

Harvest Dust

"The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched." - Henry David Thoreau

Also, from a nice poem for this theme - Kentucky Harvest by John T Banasiewicz Jr:

"Haze of brown harvest dust flying high
Changing the bright color of the sky"

And from a poem with a different feel - Harvest Song by Jean Toomer:

"My eyes are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time.
I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking
stack'd fields of other harvesters."



Finally, from a poem fitting the overall theme of this blog nicely - Dust by C. K. Williams:

"Last, hovering dust of the harvest, brief
as the half-instant hitch in the flight
of the hawk, as the poplets of light
through the leaves of the bronzing maples.

I feel pressed to mention that googling this post's title, Harvest Dust, will bring up many links to articles on the impacts of various types of harvest dust on the lives of field workers and others. Having been partly raised in a farming area, this did not surprise me, but it may be news to many of you who don't share my upbringing.

Dust in the Wind

Kansas (1977) by Kerry Livgren

I close my eyes
only for a moment
and the moment's gone
all my dreams
pass before my eyes a curiosity
dust in the wind
all we are is dust in the wind

Same old song
just a drop of water
in the endless sea
all we do
crumbles to the ground
though we refuse to see
dust in the wind
all we are is dust in the wind

Now, don't hang on
nothing lasts forever
but the earth and sky
it slips away

And all your money
won't another minute buy

Dust in the wind
all we are is dust in the wind
dust in the wind
everything is dust in the wind

Summer Dust

The unseasonably cool temperatures around Central Texas have fled, replaced by triple-digit highs. Summer has arrived, but more humid than usual. The grasses are dying. The dust is rising. A few gentle blossoms remain for our comfort.

"The good die first, and they whose hearts are dry as summer dust, burn to the socket."
-- William Wordsworth

"No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book."
-- Ellen Glasgow

"The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in a red, green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the goodness of a better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the interminable plains were in repose--and so deep a hush was on the sea, that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead."
-- Charles Dickens

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death."
-- William Shakespeare

"The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun."
-- Helen Hunt Jackson

Dust Bowl

"The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it." - John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5

"No cracked earth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen and their wives and children, who have carried on through desperate days and inspire us with their self-reliance, their tenacity and their courage." - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Stardust

Did you know you can usually be positively identified by only 3 pieces of information? Your birth date, gender, and zip code are typically enough for experienced data analysts to pinpoint everything about you. But, its still harder to identify a planet circling any other solar system than ours, so you should feel at perfect ease. Right?


Photos courtesy of NASA Hubble Project - click for larger image.