Garbage

Work drives you like wind
between suburban houses, emptying cans.
You are invisible as air
and as necessary, more efficient
than a flood leveling cities,
sweeping across plains; this city
can't survive without you.
Its houses are a body
releasing fluids, endlessly
emptying and filling with breath,
cleansing blood. Its refuse
is your job, and you
are devoted to it
like a disease, or the icon
of an obscure god.
Waste is your fool's gold.