The man on the dumpster

The man on the dumpster sits as if grasping a sail in the wind. He turns to push still inflated balloons into the dumpster's green, rusted maw. He gazes out at all he maintains, opines upon it. He hates the jade plum trees, those whose tops were chopped a few weeks ago, better to resemble Dr. Seuss drawings. He disdains the paperbark trees because they create such mess. The monkey pods are the only trees he wouldn't cut down. Look at that one with its trunk bent out of shape to catch some sun. I put in my vote for Eucalyptus, which sits alone amid the others, peeling black and brown bark, as if intervening in his fantasy might protect that tree against destruction. That's a good tree, he says. That that.