the morning after trash day

i tell the remaining plastic bottles that
in hundreds of thousands of years
maybe we'll both learn again how to be soil.
i hope we are trees with eyes. i hope
all the black garbage bags go to sleep in the sun.
i hope it never stops raining. 
i pick candy wrappers 
from the pokeberry that grows
on the side of the highway. the plants say,
"can we breathe with you?" i do not agree
to accept their kindness.
sometimes i feel like i am already a spirit.
i tell them, "i am sorry but i do not have
a mouth."
ghost upon ghost. it is what i am made for.
slipping between one word & another. 
a need & a vessel. 
the garbage truck carries an aching belly.
i know what it's like. i have lived with
people i'm afraid of. i have bargained with
the window & said, "tomorrow we will carry
all of this to the hole in the earth."
i take landfill pilgrimages whenever i can.
the piles the trucks miss always leave
a trail you can follow to the wound. 
the deer love to walk there.
they search for bones & televisions.
i ask them to help me hop the fence
but they want to keep the festering
for themselves. every once in awhile
i'll join a feast. a coven of raccoons as they 
hold a ceremony over half-rotten vegetables.
the seeds ring like bells. one holds up their hands
& says, "grow into a revenge forest."
the gods are not coming. we are them 
& we are stumbling in a land 
of rashes & wood. the truck's headlights
cast my shadow as a running man
even though i am standing still 
picking up a diet coke can from the brush.