The corner outside of the Cirque apartments is popular for walkers and bikers, coffee-drinkers and dogs, students and movie-goers, homeless and joggers, likely thanks to an arrangement of benches (which are actually the remains of the foundation of a former building) as wells as the surrounding garden of Maple and Dogwood trees and ground-covering plants and moss.  Unfortunately for the property’s groundskeeper, this lovely neighborhood resting place attracts a large amount of garbage.  

  Rather than leave a profanity-based curse or a pathetic begging plea, this Capitol Hill gardener chose to express his disgust with litterbugs using poetry.  I noticed this laminated, typed poem on a telephone pole near Harvard and Roy, a busy intersection just off Broadway.  It reads:

Note to Garden Vandals

You, who

pass by a garden and drop into it

your empty beer can, your crumpled cigarette pack and butt,

your candy wrapper, your exhausted bottle of men’s cologne,

your dog’s poop, your used condom, needle, and napkin, your

to-go latte cup, your plastic water bottle, your half-drunk tea,

your leftover soda and ice, your wad of paper, your disposable

lighter, your vodka bottle, your chewed gum, your apple core,

your popsicle stick, your unidentifiable ticket stub, your cracked cd:

the ghost of your litter drifts wherever you are.

And you, who

yank branches off the smoke trees and steal the dahlias–

what do you make of you?

The tree remembers you as a scar,

the earth understands you as scattered dirt.

With conviction,                                                                                                                                                                                     Gardener