The Conscience of a Trash Collector

The Walmart bag
skittering to a new home
in flowering creosote
The slabs of Styrofoam
nestled in holy stillness
in descending mesquite spires
“Your Ultimate Drink Stop” cup
under the motherly
Palos Verde tree

To disturb all this is risky.
Who are we to say?

The slow disintegrating rubbish
left without a thought
to blow to some unknown consequence
Isn’t it part, now, of nature?

Our eyes make it strange and obscene
while those of the wren
take it home to a nest.

I bloody my arms, break branches, but still
the plastic crumbles to chips
cardboard to dirt
The pulling away breaks
the perfect patterns
fragile and efficient
This trash, the first messenger
before the bulldozers
at the desert’s frontier
Is absorbed, easily and without judgment
into the perfection
of each square inch.

I carry my bags like a homeless schizophrenic,
They are full of what is still warm, a part of nature,
Now to be jettisoned in dumpsters
To some mystery fire or landfill
That doesn’t cleanse or clear
Only takes what we have wasted
From our sight.