Treasured Trash.

April is National Poetry Month. In past years I’ve seen Poetry In Motion poems on Nashville buses, since Nashville is one of many cities that participates in the program. This year, though, I haven’t seen any. Most of the overhead advertising space is taken up with promoting the new buses and how many improvements they’ve made. They also still advertise the Music City Transit Tracker app although they’re no longer updating it which meant all it was doing was taking up space on my phone until I deleted it, but that’s another story.

Since my employer pays me to ride the bus—at least as long as it’s to and from work—I don’t get bus tickets, and maybe that’s why I haven’t seen the local Poetry In Motion poems. One day I happened to find this on the seat before I sat down:

That reminded me of the time I was walking to work one spring morning and a coworker came up to me holding a brown paper bag. She held it open under my nose. It was full of what looked like a bunch of weeds somebody had pulled out of their yard, probably because it was a bunch of weeds somebody had pulled out of their yard.

“Can you believe my neighbor was throwing these away?” she asked.

Yeah, I could.

“Pokeweed leaves!” she shouted. “I’m gonna make poke sallet!”

Truly one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

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4 Comments

  1. Allison

    Great post. I wish the poem had included the advice for the turnip greens!

    Reply
    1. Christopher Waldrop (Post author)

      I wish it had too. I can think of a couple of tricks to improve turnip greens but I suspect the secret is something very arcane, like pick the leaves when they’re young, or pick them by moonlight.

      Reply
  2. Ann Koplow

    Treasures on your blog.
    Christopher, share your secrets
    For fabulous posts.

    Reply
    1. Christopher Waldrop (Post author)

      Comments are treasure,
      Especially when they’re yours,
      They add value here.

      Reply

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