Garbage Men
Trailing steel cans
and rolling out their
long rags.
The morning is a frost
broken in clamorous relief.
Frayed holes in their eaten
gloves carry a crushed chore,
a rotted job bundled in skins
of wet plastics.
They emerge from a deep
hidden hour
riding the back jaws
of neglected mammoths.
A storm hammers
in the scrape of their tongues.
The dogs lunge
for their voices.
They remove what lingers too long
from our past.
Published Black Buzzard Press 1982
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