Tipping Point
I drive out of cleaning up a life
and because the subie needs a run
into the tip now ‘Transfer Station’
painted over by adventurous youths
in crisp purple and black to ‘Alien Nation’,
from the Nissan Hut daubed with ‘Hades’
a faithful dog or one of many faiths
sniffs the door for an inkling of weather
finds nothing to report flumps on a rug
once Persian but surely never anywhere flown.
The keeper rises rake and shovel in hands
from within the open shipping container
muttering what could be a binding curse
his eyes instruct that my lot of glass and wears
should go into the far subsiding corner,
he looks like something out of Tolkien
and I expect his arms to open wide
brandish a staff look up at the sky
speak in an elegant dimensional tongue
but ‘four dollars and fifty cents” is all I hear.
That's a truly fine poem, James...and also true that, like Orpheus, you got out of Hades alive! :)
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