Poetry Sunday: To the Garbage Collectors...

For our first Poetry Sunday of 2016, how about something a little different? 

Here's a poem that celebrates a group of people who we too often overlook but who we depend upon to do their necessary work to keep our society functioning. First responders get all the glory, but where would we be without these guys and their weekly pickups? Knee-deep in garbage to start with.

To the Garbage Collectors in Bloomington, Indiana, the First Pickup of the New Year

by PHILIP APPLEMAN

(the way bed is in winter, like an aproned lap,   

    like furry mittens,

    like childhood crouching under tables)

The Ninth Day of Xmas, in the morning black   

outside our window: clattering cans, the whir   

of a hopper, shouts, a whistle, move on ...   

I see them in my warm imagination

the way I’ll see them later in the cold,

heaving the huge cans and running

(running!) to the next house on the street.

My vestiges of muscle stir

uneasily in their percale cocoon:

what moves those men out there, what

drives them running to the next house and the next?   

Halfway back to dream, I speculate:

The Social Weal? “Let’s make good old

    Bloomington a cleaner place

    to live in—right, men? Hup, tha!”

Healthy Competition? “Come on, boys,

    let’s burn up that route today and beat those dudes   

    on truck thirteen!”

Enlightened Self-Interest? “Another can,

    another dollar—don’t slow down, Mac, I’m puttin’

    three kids through Princeton?”

Or something else?

Terror?

A half hour later, dawn comes edging over   

Clark Street: layers of color, laid out like

a flattened rainbow—red, then yellow, green,

and over that the black-and-blue of night   

still hanging on. Clark Street maples wave   

their silhouettes against the red, and through   

the twiggy trees, I see a solid chunk   

of garbage truck, and stick-figures of men,   

like windup toys, tossing little cans—

and running.

All day they’ll go like that, till dark again,   

and all day, people fussing at their desks,   

at hot stoves, at machines, will jettison

tin cans, bare evergreens, damp Kleenex, all   

things that are Caesar’s.

O garbage men,

the New Year greets you like the Old;   

after this first run you too may rest

in beds like great warm aproned laps

and know that people everywhere have faith:   

putting from them all things of this world,   

they confidently bide your second coming.

                          ~~~

I love that last verse. It says it all really, doesn't it? "People everywhere have faith" that the garbage men will come.