Bin by Bin

Jun 7

Every day, millions of people across our country rise before dawn; pull on uniforms, aprons, or work boots; and head out to do the jobs that keep our communities clean, safe, and comfortable. Their paychecks seldom reflect the importance of what they do. Yet through countless ordinary acts—one shift, one task, one bin at a time—they hold our society together.

Here’s to America’s unsung heroes.

Bin by Bin

by Tracy K. Smith

The 5 am truck idles
at the curb, inching along
to keep pace with the first man
walking, unlucky son whose job
is to rise when this city’s other men
have only just fallen into bed
drunk, sated, ghostlike from
scouring the parks, pubs,
bridges, piers, and stairs
to the nowhere men gather
after dusk. Saturday before
even the sun can blink an eye.
Venus still steady in the island’s
eastward sky. The keys to all
the city’s blue bins weigh down
his belt with a music soothing
to the worried sick and lonely.
Discrete Man. Dutiful One.
When he comes, he doesn’t
hum. Deep in duty, he lets
the music make itself: wine jugs,
beer bottles, mustard urns, dregs
in glass flasks, in crocks, in tins.
Phials of ointment meant not
to cure but to permit the sick
merely to endure. He greets
the cobbles like a lover,
tumbling empties down into
his barrel then up into his truck.
Like the night soil man—stoic hero
I saw sketched once in a schoolbook—
whose patient barrow combed
stone cities, thatched cities,
cities of brick and timber, wattle
and dung. Hauling our every
stark truth into the dark.