She's dressed for a morning
as cool as her childhood
village in Shandong:
warm trousers and a jacket
zipped up to her throat,
floppy-brimmed hat pulled low
over her bob cut silver hair.
Picks through the corner trash
receptacle with her practical
cotton garden-gloved hands.
Underneath the discarded leaves
of an office rubber tree plant,
she fishes out empty Mountain Dew
and Red Bull cans.
He, a white gloves firm lawyer
or hedge fund manager or CEO,
waits at the stoplight in his Bentley Continental.
Peers over his cheaters at her endeavors.
Guns his gleaming anthracite coupe
up the hill to take lunch
or treat himself to a nooner
when the signal surrenders
to his desire for green.
She crushes the cans beneath
her drug store athletic shoes
and stuffs them into a thirty gallon
woven plastic bag.
Redemption pays a nickel apiece
or by the pound. Twenty years
from now -properly invested-
she might have enough to buy
a Bentley for her grandson
to drive in her funeral procession.
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