The Stillness
Robert Allen
July 29, 2021
Tuesdays in my neighborhood I drive down
the quiet street, looking at blue recycle
bin after bin, stuffed to the brim with what
I cannot comprehend the endless source of.
Cardboard boxes peeking over the top,
once-used packing foam, empty supply bags,
damaged pieces of lumber, lengths of pipe,
remnants of failed decorating ideas—
I have even seen legs of plastic chairs
propping up the hinged lids at hungry angles.
Where do people get all this junk? I ask
because I am clueless. Do they buy pizza,
beer, and pop from some deeply rooted fear
that these overblown garbage crates will die
without constant nourishment? It would take
me weeks to fill mine, and the noise it makes,
rolling out to the curb and back, its wheels
scoring the concrete as they inch along,
not to mention the grinding diesel engine
of the monster truck when it comes to lift
these supposedly reusable wares
onto its long, yawning back. My jaw drops
to contemplate the stillness of my life.
I do not consume enough of the world’s
bright inventions to ever keep my bin
at profitable levels. I come home
trying to conceive how I would begin
to throw a few of my accumulated
treasures away, but why swallow this task?
Can it be wrong to hold on to the past,
to believe there is a story to tell
in every phone, stopped clock, or carelessly
broken doll that falls in my water well?
I must be the last old coot on the block
who stays put despite rippling fads, would rather
hibernate than share any human trait
with the fever of mindless bliss in it,
deplores the excess of waste on display
from sleepy cul-de-sac to busy cross street,
and envies the calm methodical ease
with which the neighbors ply their purging trade.
Robert Allen is retired and lives with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and six cats. He has poems in di-vêrsé-city, Voices de la Luna, the Texas Poetry Calendar, the San Antonio Express-News, The Ocotillo Review, and Poetry on the Move. He now co-facilitates Gemini Ink’s Open Writer’s Lab.
