It Is Just Litter

He’s standing there with his thumb on the screen

tracking the white, ragged ghost of a grocery sack

as it hitches on a chain-link tooth and shudders

in the exhaust of a passing bus, trying to find the art

in the cinematic shiver of sun-bleached polyethylene

crinkling like a dry lung against the rust.

Meanwhile, two feet away, a woman is losing the fight

with a damp paper bag that’s giving up the ghost,

the heavy milk carton ready to hit the pavement

and split, but he wants a metaphor for the spirit

or some other weightless thing that doesn’t have to

carry the eggs home or know the sharp friction

of being snagged and left to bleach.

It isn't a poem. It’s just litter

he won't pick up once the light is right.