Towards Monday Lunchtime At The Rubbish Tip
By Alun Robert
SUVs, metallic sedans, pick-up trucks, white vans packed
with weekend’s hard labour removing treasured trash
in a queue from the highway (engines revving in Parked)
one eye on the watch, one to watch gates come ajar.
Operatives bedecked in fluorescent coats of orange or ochre,
many coiffured in hard hats, all with steel caps to save toes,
geezers from round the bend with designer chin stubble and
a suntanned blonde from Aus purring English with a smile.
Then forward encroach the hoards - impatient, belligerent
with armfuls of harmfuls clasped far from their chests.
Most rushing, much pushing exuding rich expletives when
told into which orifice to stick their accumulated garbage.
As rubbish bins overload (heaven for foxes and maggots),
plastic bags split sideways like the young wear their Levi’s.
Recycling over-stacked with everything Shamrock green
next rusting white goods: naked fridges with odd magnets
of Paris, Perth, Prague and much loved feral moggies with
bulbous TVs and radios, decks deprived of warped vinyl,
well passed sell-by-date food rich deep in fungus and mould
poured into ten gallon drums like Caribbean bands play near
grass cuttings slightly pungent, conifers cut in their prime,
Christmas trees far off season, weeds wilted like flowers,
home roofing and wall cladding in magnolia and off-puce
off ceilings and partitions but no asbestos allowed here.
While sun squints across cumulus, hints of damp in the air,
golf brollies at hand in primary colours by segments and
just in case of flooding, designer green wellies in the shed
under a foreman’s lock & key - only he wears bright pink.
Though stenches and acrid toxins perfume the dank ether,
they’re heavily camouflaged by microwaved beef curry:
a special in the canteen of recycled chairs, plastic tables
with chilled water free en tap but bottled charged extra.
When heinous seagulls overhead (posturing like vultures),
swirl around like crop circles then swoop down low
to scavenge their lunch as they don’t appear to be fussy -
today’s microwaved curry or last month’s purple stew.
For a sharp shower arrives scattering punters and workers,
the latter to the canteen with the former to their motors:
SUVs, metallic sedans, pick-up trucks, white vans empty
after a morning’s hard labour of disposing treasured trash.
Written Word ‘Hand’ poems