Eight fifteen on Tuesday’s chilly morn,

Three weeks yet until the Saviour’s dawn.

A feeble orange sun helps dispel the sheen

Of frost that hides your frozen windscreen.

With scratch and scrape, scrape and scratch

You hurry to clear enough of a patch

Of glass in which you can view your route

To where you’ll toil until five in your business suit.

 

But, can you hear them coming from down the street?

See their hi-vis clothes and their warm, booted feet?

Listen as they take paper and tins, smashing bottles and jars.

As they manoeuvre past rows of white frosted cars.

Same day, each week, they reverse down the lane

Loading up all the rubbish and then they’re gone again.

A discordant sound that reaches everyone’s ear

The familiar pulse gets recycled throughout the year.

 

But today their tune is drowned out by another

Of an angry young girl and her still drunken lover.

Both rowing, both cursing, both dishing out blame

As they try to rekindle frail love’s weakened flame.

It’s a place for the old with cold, windy weather

As the scumbag and the maggot still bicker together.

Your waste is emptied and cleared as the bin wagon plays

And the bells ring out for all our Christmas Days.

 

Gavin Dimmock

December 4, 2018