The Scenic Route

There’s a tree along the scenic route
That’s clearly getting busy dying.
Could be a long process, regardless.

It surveys the surrounding forest.
Go ahead. Anthropomorphize it.
It wants to see as much as it can.

There’s a truck driven by a wide man
Carefully unloading a dumpster,
Carefully extracting a dumpster,

Then reloading the empty dumpster
And sliding it where the full one was,
Then reloading the full-up dumpster

And driving off, past the dying tree,
Down the scenic route, down the mountain,
Down to the desert transfer station

To offload the full-up dumpster’s trash
Acquired on top of the mountain.
Go ahead. Anthropomorphize it.

The weekly ritual of the truck
That changes out the mountain dumpsters,
It wants to carry on forever.

The clearly dying tree understands,
But it also holds a secret wish
That it will keep dying long enough

To outlast the dumpster ritual,
At least for another winter, once
Unplowed snows close down the scenic route.