He looked like a Sergeant Major,

in a cavalry regiment.

Quite dapper with a trim mustache

and a Van Dyke beard, well kempt.

He sat in lordly splendor

in a arm chair at the dump.

Directing those who came each day,

to drop stuff off and take away

the things that lay about.

 

Some two by fours, a piece of ply,

an old oil drum, a bail of wire,

a coffee table without legs,

steel rails and nails and wooden pegs.

Last years Play Boy, a piece of pipe,

fence posts or horse shoes,

manure quite ripe.

And through the pungent

fly blown haze,

he withered with a piercing eye,

transgressors heeding not the sign

to show where garbage was to lie.

Not there, he cried, can you not read,

the sign I wrote for all to heed?

And pointing with a old cob pipe,

directed where it would be right.

 

When all had left, he stretched his frame.

Leaving the torn and tattered chair,

to drive the graders gleaming blade

which leveled all as it was bade.

Then as time tolled another day,

the county Boutiques gates were closed.

And on into the deepening dusk

He quietly went his way.

 

 

David Garlick, Ardrossan, 1986