William Cordeiro

Indolent Sunday

I walk to town. I notice rubbish
everywhere, bright plastic glutting
summer fields: burger wrappers,
six-pack rings, party foil, coffee
sleeves, rainbow pools of motor
oil, scumponds sumptuous as antifreeze,
Snapple caps, lotto tickets, snak-pak
puddings, Buffalo Wild Wings hot
sauce packets, paper scraps and Dixie
cups, sports bras, Ruffles, Muscle
Milk, hard lemonade, Newport butts,
tricked-out bobbysocks and bubble-
wrap; a baby rattle, a centerfold;
some dark crushed thing incinerated.   
Bibelots atop the farmland and
the roadside gutters ripe with thickets.

I’d been trudging up to Safeway but
at the stoplight, I see the shop
is shut in honor of the sabbath.
Its stock looks frivolous anyhow—
so many stacks of cans and cases,
packing crates and interlocking
cardboard boxes. 
      Going back
across the glacial till of hills and gorges,
a runoff’s mottled chorus trickles. I sing
along, a reckless mumble tumbling in me.  
I resurrect old greenlush lyrics. But then
gutbucket pickup trucks push me off
onto a narrow shoulder. They cough, spit
sparks, burn smut. Some shout I am  
a witch or worse. They hotrod off and toss
out empty bottles.          
      I love
the rooted things of earth, the shiest days
when nothing but the past might change.
Puddles, blossoms, smudged little leaf and
pebble—rot’s mackle, weeds, rocks, muck,
vast clover overspilling meadow bottoms!
Slow down, I think. Impossible. The light
winks out. It’s late. My life is passing by.