8:41 p.m. - 2008-10-07
-
Donald R. Anderson
Pride of the Recycler
Today I was walking to the gate,
getting close to home,
or apartment,
and saw a man, with the lost
look of the homeless,
with his salvaged cans in bags
across his back.
I had been saving up my
empty water bottles for such
an incident of chance.
I hurried into the apartment,
grabbed my two plastic bags
full of empty water bottles,
and ran to catch up with the man,
who was now about a couple hundred feet
down the street.
This right after getting a ride
within a block of there
from my generous friend,
the writer that keeps us in line.
When I caught up with him,
I asked him if he wanted these,
and he looked at me as if he thought,
what's my problem?
And shook his head no.
Perhaps his paranoia
led him to believe that things
were too good to be true,
and he had lost his faith in people.
Perhaps he didn't speak English.
His sun-weathered face might have been
of either hispanic or caucasian origin,
it was hard to tell his origins.
I walked back to the apartment,
and entering the gate I saw
the lady that had stopped me once
maybe over a year ago,
who had asked me if she could have
my papers to recycle,
and so I thought,
ask her.
So I did, saying,
"Do you recycle?"
She said she did,
in her usual friendly way,
and so I gifted the recyclables to her.
Perhaps that was who they were meant for.
