a chain-link fence festooned
with hubcaps and old license plates,
the man at the dump eyed me
with evident distaste. He had a dog,
an unchained squittering of snarls.
His hair, like mine, was long and tangled.
Indeed he looked a lot like me—filthy work
shirt, filthier jeans, filthiest boots—
though this did not incline him
to be receptive to my pathetic load
of apparently substandard trash,
though receive it he must,
directing me with a pointed “over there”
to a moldering mound of who-
knows-what where I might deposit
my miserable trunk of junk.
“Earth laughs in flowers,” said
Emerson. If so, there is no laughter here
beneath the hovering birds of stink,
the toxic plumes of decay, rubbish
fires vomiting smut, monstrous engines
of crush and shove and bury.
On the other hand, the Buddha
tells us that “a sweet-smelling lotus
blooms upon a heap of filth.”
Perhaps. For all that, “pulchritudinous”
is not a word often spoken here.
On my way out, this guardian of garbage
leans into the car to growl at me
for leaving my broken offerings
upon the wrong smoldering tumulus.
“Couldn’t put it where I told you,”
he snarls. Does he want it moved?
He does not. We are both on the thin
edge of civility, but because “restraint
in all things is good,” I roll up
the window and drive slowly away,
thinking how some day someone
will enjoy him with a sharp knife.
Still, what do I know about this monk
of the dump with his dog-pound Cerberus,
his muddy tattoo and abused hands,
who owns what no one else wants,
who knows that into every life
a little rust must fall. Maybe he knows
he is where he belongs, matter learning
to love matter, even, or especially,
the matter that to others does not matter.
Where decay frolics and wastes away,
he knows that we are ashes, that we are dust,
but also knows, perhaps, perhaps,
that here, beyond the fetor and disgust,
beyond the all that time consumes
the spotless, fragrant lotus blooms.