I fling my sorted trash—
plastic milk jugs, empty liter soda bottles
into the bin
with frenzied motions,
hurried because the gray-haired
man in flannel shirt
waits behind me, stock-still
with his small bag of numbers 1 and 2 plastic.
I move to the side
to allow him access, but
he dismisses me with a wave of his weathered hand.
“Go ahead”, he says, in measured tones,
“I’ve come to the conclusion
that the grave is all there is
at the end of this
and I’m in no hurry
to get there.”

I nod and smile,
toss the next container
more slowly,
then move to lob soup cans and crumpled foil
into the adjacent bin, admiring
the arc of their flight.
And I wonder what waits for any of us
but the expanse of our lives and
the inevitable passing—the touch
of damp night air
on sun-darkened skin
seized by summer, or the fading
glory of August, the odd flaming leaf
portending the season’s demise?
As I enter middle age and life no longer
stretches endlessly before me,
I treasure most the familiar,
yet irreplaceable sensations
of every cycle,
every turn.