Morning, not my best time any more, to rush
past coffee and lazily checking computer
while eating dry corn flakes, unsweetened.
This phase of Alzheimer's, all-consuming,
brings a new routine, and I'm still
adapting, grumpily until noon.
Garbage trucks have also changed their routine,
beeping and grinding and blocking
our thin road, the men happily hopping on and off
with their messy hair or shaved heads and
tattoos on muscled arms, smiling and laughing
as if they have not a care in the world,
so I love them for this and wave,
reaching my left hand high.
My husband in the passenger seat, worried
about the wind mussing his hair, asks me
"Do you know those men?" a vestige of jealousy
in his question, with my answer honest and short,
"They seem happy doing a necessary job;
It's my way of saying thank you."
Our town no longer has a biannual junk day
so people put out still useful tables or
boxes marked FREE, after a yard sale
full of odds and ends, chairs,
slightly worn or chipped, sometimes perfect.
After dropping him off at the Adult Day Center,
I workout then drive home, noticing a gilded statue
left behind by the garbage men.
She is an angel holding something in both hands, but
whatever it was has broken off,
and I decide to bring her home despite
the obvious hole in her serene head, bent in prayer.