Rubbish
I see people buying things and
throwing them away;
I see it outside their houses
every single day.
I see the lack of respect this
dismal junk collects;
Much of it for children which
they very soon forget.
There it lies in jumbled heaps,
discarded and ignored;
Insult on top of injury
never to be mourned.
Not all rubbish is garbage. Look!
There’s some kiddie’s trike;
Surely, he loved it once
before growing into bikes.
Now that bike is cast off too
not even sold or stored;
The chain rusts, the chrome pits
and the handlebars corrode.
It lies forgotten and ignored
in some weedy shroud;
No more to swing down the lane
with joyful bell out loud.
Not upright as it should be
but chucked down on its side;
Exposed to winter’s cruel
tirade after its last ride.
My bright new bicycle
saw me, old at just thirteen,
Oiling gears and chains,
polishing a freedom machine.
I could not tell a child now
to clean between the spokes,
To get the rim shining bright.
why, he’d say, it ain’t broke.
Toys your kids tire of
they are not the only remnant;
Grown-ups chuck out stuff too -
whatever they think is spent.
Building toss on toss
the trashy mountains man has made.
Yes, cardboard rots, steel rusts
and gloss eventually fades.
Yet always there is plastic
persisting persisting;
And for all our good intent,
stays ever resisting.
© RM Meyer
North Devon, May 2019
