Landfill Planet

It’s fine, the clouds that establish the sky.
Observing this recent situation,

Recall a school day that was, what, fifty,
Maybe fifty-five years ago, the lot

Where, it being recess, most of the class
Had been organized for a kickball game,

The boy who couldn’t run or kick left out
Of necessity, thanks to frailty.

It was early spring, forsythia time,
But the day was unseasonably warm,

And the necessarily-excluded
Child was wildly exultant in the warmth.

He hobbled around the perimeter
Of the asphalt lot, hollering loudly

To all and no one in particular,
It’s eighty degrees out, take off your coats!

Surely, it wasn’t eighty degrees out,
And most of the children weren’t wearing coats.

Still, though his nickname that year was Retard,
No one shouted back at him to shut up,

And he was immensely pleased with himself.
He couldn’t stay on his feet for too long,

So he sat to rest on a concrete step
By a door with a black-and-yellow sign

He’d been told was for a fallout shelter,
Which clarified really nothing for him.

And that’s that. Exactly all the recall
Of that day’s then recent situation,

One invisible bubble of methane
Outgassing from somewhere inside a skull.

Huzzah for landfills. Hooray for them all,
Sediments gathering, leaking waste worlds.