What I Saw Today (
The toilet was upside down in the crabgrass near the edge
of the too-straight road.
I noticed it as I walked fast, on no sidewalk, on gravel and broken glass.
I slowed down to notice it; I smiled at the incongruous object.
The toilet was olive-green ceramic, its base up in the air, white and rust-edged.
A padded plastic seat cover, green-crayon green, hung half-broken from the bowl;
this also showing white
through the cracks in the plastic.
I repeat the object as best I can but it’s no photo, not even a painting:
the image shifts,
in words retouched – it could connote abandonment,
so stark and lonely,
or those magic myriad details that make even the samest suburban landscape unique,
because people live there. Even a photo could be retouched,
the toilet isolated, a powerful focused image, meaning-laden,
not one millions of things and creatures sitting alongside that too
straight road.
But even those things could be included: the crabgrass, the gravel,
the half-crushed rabbit lying in the gravel,
the basketball hoop, the shattered green beer bottles,
the burning-plastic air: a resonant image of suburban blight.
The image shifts, such magic.
I passed this toilet on a
too-straight
So incongruous. I named the colors – olive green, green-crayon green, rust.
I knew I would and so I do: remember.
But I guess I won’t repeat it.
It was just sitting there, after
all.