To a Decorative Dwarf in the Garbage

Perhaps you’ll find a home in some back yard
Beneath a poplar, or beside an ash;
How could those soft suburban hearts grow hard
And leave you stranded in the morning trash?

Perhaps someone will pick you up and see
Those qualities your owners didn’t notice:
Your hunchbacked stoop, your gnarled and knobby knee;
Your bloblike squat, as dumpy as a poultice.

But then again, perhaps it’s for the best—
In Scarsdale, shifts in decor’s apparatus
Are unrelenting, like the primal quest
For Lebensraum, and cash, and social status.

Much better that you take your speckled hump
And grace some corner of the local dump.

—Joseph S. Salemi