garbage day

A Poem by anais.vionet

a poem of daring escape from certain fate

It's garbage day - huge green trucks
make their rounds, with flexible robot
mechanical arms doing all the work
with never a human lift or touch.

As the contraption picks up a bin
the truck arms rotate then dump it
into an elevated dumpster, held
on yet more arms. Suddenly, a sheet
of paper catches the wind and flies up.

The green tree-lined residential street
offers one thin, ragged strip of sky
where the paper, now still climbing
and gently swooping, could escape.

The sheet of paper takes its escape
like an act of will, rising, faster now,
as it catches the real wind above
the trees and takes off like a bird.

If a mindless sheet of paper can escape
it's all-but-certain fate, then how much
more likely is it that we can escape as well?
I couldn't help smiling as I watched - go paper go!