Another Earth Day

No questions asked of those who gather today

To clear trash from the creek that winds through town,

So you needn’t worry that if you join us

You’ll be joining an assembly of the smugly righteous.

Some may be here because they’re concerned

About the harm that the trash may do to the value

Of their creek-side property, and some because

A friend of theirs asked for their company.

And if these are free from the vice of littering,

Others may have come today to atone.

Maybe the young man struggling to pull a tire

To shore was the boy who threw the stone,

Two years ago, that shattered the streetlamp

Across from your house, a gesture meant

To convince the boys he ran with that the law,

Though it cowed most people, didn’t cow him.

The teenage girl gathering cans and bottles

May have tried her hardest to scratch the mirror

In the girls’ bathroom at Mercy High School

As an act of protest against the face

It claimed to be hers. And the veteran whose pile

Includes a shopping cart and a TV screen

May be doing his best, for all we know,

To appease his conscience for dropping his cigarette

On a handwoven rug in a house in Kandahar

And grinding it out with his heel to show the owners

How angry he was for their meager cooperation.

You can think of their piles as acts of penance

Offered the goddess assigned to protect the creek,

Whose capacity for forgiveness is proverbial,

Who will gladly read your willingness to join the cleanup,

If you want her to, as more than sufficient evidence

Of true contrition. Any disturbance of spirit that once

May have shown itself in your need to mar things

Is now behind you, she’s certain.

And those in doubt can watch you work.