Fastidious Leonard

A newspaper plops
on the walk
coffee perks
and the moon is still up
when Leonard shaves:

the only sanitation employee
who smells of Musk
at six a.m.

and doesn't mind
his fellow workers
who joke
"Leonard is the only man
who can fall into a garbage dump

and come up smelling
like a rose"

Notes

McDaniel, Wilma. (2001) Borrowed Coats. Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, New York.
Courtesy University of California, Merced Library. Copyright owned by the Regents of the University of California.