garden

i learn to love trash
in the alley behind stop & shop
where shopping carts
gorge themselves on rotten cantelope.
keep wrappers like the husks 
of children. evidence that once
a ghost fingertipped & feasted.
i have yet to lick the world clean.
that doesn't mean i don't believe
in bliss & the promise
that everything is somewhere
in a cycle of unraveling.
i find a button & pluck it open.
collect scrap of metal 
& call them harvest. in the new world
to forage is to dance with
long dead materials. bike tires
& pen caps & syringes. 
plastic kissing awake glazed donuts. 
i find myself in the garden
pruning the necks
of tooth brushes. i am trying
to teach them how to grow back.
instead they weep. 
each of them an elegy.
they repeat
here is how long you must wait
to return to soil. they all
shake their heads. 
greased shoulders. bottle caps 
blinking away prehistoric moons.
they want to be volcanos 
& diamonds & fern leaves & teeth.
don't we all? often i worry
what it means to exist 
is to wait & wait again.
right now i am waiting for a bus
to tell the garden "goodnight."
until then i water my garbage
with handfuls of broken glass.
headlights polkadot 
our little plot. soon
the morning will come to plant.
seeds of used batteries 
& gnarled aux cords. 
until them the my garden
will be restless. i tell a tin can
don't think too much,
it will help you rest.