A Reassuring Sign - Feb 17 2026

 

A Reassuring Sign

Feb 17 2026

A random assortment of mismatched cans

plastic bins

and odd receptacles

 — some new

some vintage,

some battered, some split —

stand haphazardly by the curb

up and down the street.

Some have toppled

some lean,

and some are sinking into the snow

like tipsy drunks at closing time. 

A few are missing their tops,

lost in a move

or when they sailed off 

in that big wind last winter, 

and it wasn’t worth the trouble

to go looking after dark.

There are also some green garbage bags

slumped in the snow

the birds have got into

or neighbourhood dogs have trashed.

And someone’s old furniture

free for the taking

has also been dragged down their drive,

where it will be left behind

as the big yellow truck rattles noisily by.

Tired pieces

looking forlorn

with their cheap veneer and upholstery torn,

shivering 

in the cold winter light

like orphaned waifs

waiting for a good home.

They must be hoping some college kids

will borrow a pick-up

and harvest their treasures,

like gleaners

scouring the fields

after the grain’s been reaped

the fruit picked.

And I’ll feel gratified

to see them find a second life

instead of carted off to the dump:

clearly, my Depression era parents

who abhorred waste

taught me well.

So perhaps a broken-down sofa

with a wobbly leg

will complete the common room,

a child’s old desk

will help some freshman

do just enough to pass.

Every Thursday, regular as clockwork

the bins are dutifully placed

by the good neighbours

as well as the bad,

and at the usual time

the big yellow truck goes rumbling by,

stop/starting down the street

in a cloud of diesel exhaust. 

Even the scofflaws

who leave their bags unbinned

sort of comply.

Garbage day

with all the bins standing expectantly

like sentinels

where the driveways meet the road,

a reassuring sign

that something still works

in our small corner of a world

that seem increasingly out of control;

too big to comprehend,

too chaotic

to count on anymore. 

Who knows where the garbage goes

  — out of sight, out of mind

is good enough for me.

All I know is that every Friday it’s a clean start,

which I’ll gladly take

in a world of lapsed deadlines

and past mistakes,

  — once a week

a fresh beginnIng 

and definitive stop.

And later today,

the bins will all go back where they belong

in a dark garage or fetid box.

Waiting for another week

when a motley crew of bins and cans

in various colours and mismatched heights

will — as the schedule demands — be trundled out

in the early morning light

and left,

stacked haphazardly by the road.

Looking to me like stoner teens

skipping class.

Packs of slouching adolescents

who look like they don’t want to be there

 — or really, too worldly wise, be anywhere —

lounging by the curb

killing time.

A poem mostly about the bourgeois reassurance of municipal politics and city managers, who oversee things like potholes, snow clearing, and garbage pickup. Useful, measurable, and everyday down-to-earth stuff, so unlike national and international affairs, where high flown rhetoric, cross border tension, inefficiency, and corruption rule. Local government , where you can see your taxes at work, run into the mayor at the Walmart.

So when I see those bins dutifully put out on the appointed day and the garbage truck appear, I feel oddly reassured that things still work. 

And especially in our increasingly complex interdependent world, where disaster can so quickly cascade into apocalypse.