Terri Kirby Erickson’s poem K&W appeared here in July 2012.

Trash Man
By Terri Kirby Erickson

Back in the days when everything seemed miraculous
and permanent, people kept metal garbage cans
in their backyards instead of the plastic ones we wheel
every Wednesday now, to the curb. So when the trash
truck came squealing into the neighborhood, it stopped
on our street and out popped two or three barrel-toting
trash men wearing thick gloves and filthy jumpsuits.
They’d spin their dirty drums with the same motion
our father used when waxing his car only ten times
faster, making a gravelly sound you couldn’t mistake
for anything else. Depending on how early it was,
we pressed our noses against the kitchen window or quit
playing ball long enough to watch them toss those gray,
saucer-shaped lids on the ground, lift the cans and dump
a week’s worth of garbage into the barrels. We wondered
how they stood the stench or brought themselves to touch
those nasty bins around which we kept such a wide berth.
But these guys whistled while they worked and waved
at us kids idle in our yards and houses–smiled like men
rolling the moon from one side of the sky to the other
instead of all the stuff that people didn’t need or want–
the detritus of so many lives, laid bare.