The motifs of light and shadow trade off throughout “Dusting.” The poem starts out blindingly bright, then fades. The first stanza highlights just how bright the solarium is twice: “no / shade in sight” (Lines 1-2); “a rage / of light” (Lines 4-5). Beulah polishes the “dark wood” (Line 7), imbuing it with life until it “gleam[s]” (Line 9). Beulah latches onto the shiny details of her memories. The “bright” (Line 14) carnival fish ripples in a “clear bowl” (Line 14). She comes home the night of a dance to see the living room full of sparkling snow, the fish caught in a bowl of ice. The present day becomes the bright yellow of a “canary in bloom” (Line 20). Sometime after these memories, she finds herself cast in ominous “shadow” (Line 35).

Beulah seeks a balanced contrast between light and shadow. The wood she dusts, her springboard into the happy world of memory, is both dark and gleaming. Two metaphors describe the fish from the carnival: a ripple of light and a dark, gory wound. Too much light is oppressive. The solarium illuminates Beulah so brightly that it reduces her to one dimension, obscuring the rich depths of her thoughts and feelings.