Daybreak, grab for his glasses
morning, walk crooked roads.
Midday, hustle the masses
evening, check for overloads.
Overstated, underplanned
the minute-hand, the sweep.
The far side of understand
fell into holes of sleep.
It's hard to pardon much of what one sees
along this hastily constructed causeway,
dead-ending nearby the confluence of
two polluted riverways which flush
their foul cargo into the ocean beyond.
On rare nights, that daub of maple syrup
above becomes a gleaming grapefruit moon.
Then, the two arteries of liquid litter
flowing past the "Riverside Estates",
positively glitter in the lunar glow.
In little more than a wink, five hundred
blinking toadstools of pre-fabricated
woodframe and slapdash brick became
a checkerboard of split-levels set atop
bull-dozed swamp, near the city limits.
On a shelf, the "Last Whole Earth Catalog",
yesterday's New Testament, gathers dust.
On the coffee table, "Consumer Reports"
and "Better Homes and Gardens" get read.
Biofeedback and Lamaze on Thursdays.
Ballet lessons, Little League and orthodontics
lay in the future. But by this coming Fall,
a mini mall! Lives, reeking of urban sprawl,
pile up with disposable diapers and panty hose,
wine-in-a-box, and roach clips under the sofa.
Organized into car pools, fueled by plastic
money, tidied up with trash compactors,
and recorded on Polaroid snapshots, ...
throwaway lifestyles of mass consumption
pile up amidst the mounting landfills.
And as the years pile up, what survivor of
a broken family or a blended family or
"All in the Family", universal remote in hand,
pauses long enough to watch the waste
float by the shores of "Garbage World"?