Can and Bottle Man
by Skip Renker
“Honor all honorable work.”
—the Buddha
Again this morning he slings
the rattling bag over his shoulder,
pauses at the water fountain,
presses on it with both palms
like a hunter drinking from a river,
the long, curled hairs on the ridges
of his earlobes alert to faraway
poptops, the flat tang
of aluminum tossed on aluminum.
His dark eyes glint like
a woodsman’s, he prowls past
math and science classrooms,
the brown monotones of professors
oozing into hallways. As if
by scent, scat, half a footprint,
he sniffs out the entrails of
wastebaskets, sorts redeemables
for the bulging seedbag cadged
from the local feed and grain.
He’s mastered a taxonomy of
logos, colors, cylindrical shapes.
Let us honor his mastery,
his concentration,
his low melodic humming,
his sticky, ungloved hands,
his stained, soft-soled shoes,
his stringy grey hair and beard,
his hunter’s instinct, his daily work.
F.W. "Skip" Renker's poems have appeared in Awakenings Review, Leaping Clear, Presence, and many other publications, as well as the Atlanta Review, Passages North, and Amethyst Review anthologies. He has a Pushcart nomination. His books are Sifting the Visible, (Mayapple Press), Bearing the Cast (Saint Julian Press), and A Patient Hunger, (Atmosphere Press).
