Monday's Poetry: Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout

 

by Pa Rock

Poetry Appreciator

It is early Monday morning - Labor Day Monday - and already the week has gotten off to a bad start.  

The trash man comes on Mondays, early on Mondays, even on holidays with the rare exceptions being those when Christmas and New Year's Day fall on Monday - and perhaps when the Fourth of July does as well.   Labor Day is no worker's holiday for my faithful trash man, and I know that.

But today I forgot.

I always sit the house trash by the door on Sunday evenings so that I remember to get it out to the road bright and early the next morning.  As I take it out, I stop by the garage and collect the two or three bags that have accumulated over the week.  I pay good money for the trash service, and my intent is to use it. But last night I forgot the weekly ritual of setting the house trash by the door, and when I went out at 6:15 this morning to let the chickens out and feed the cat, I didn't give the trash a second thought.  Then, an hour later at 7:15 a.m. I had just sat down at the computer in front of the living room window when I heard the distinctive growl of the garbage truck as it came roaring up the lane, and I watched in a fugue of surly sadness as the two young men drove their truck right on by my house.

So now I have three bags of trash in the garage, and another that is half-full in the house - and by next Monday I will have more!  It is obviously going to be one of those weeks!

Today's poem by the wonderful Shel Silverstein is about a young lady who would not take out her garbage.  Start your week with a smile as you read Silverstein's rhyming tale of Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout!

SARAH CYNTHIA SYLVIA STOUT

by Shel Silverstein

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out.
She'd wash the dishes and scrub the pans 

Cook the yams and spice the hams,
And though her parents would scream and shout, 

She simply would not take the garbage out. 

And so it piled up to the ceiling:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown bananas and rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the windows and blocked the door, 

With bacon rinds and chicken bones, 

Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peels, 

Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans, and tangerines,
Crusts of black-burned buttered toast, 

Grisly bits of beefy roast.

The garbage rolled on down the halls,
It raised the roof, it broke the walls,
I mean, greasy napkins, cookie crumbs, 

Blobs of gooey bubble gum, 

Cellophane from old bologna, 

Rubbery, blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk, and crusts of pie,
Rotting melons, dried-up mustard, 

Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold French fries and rancid meat, 

Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.

At last the garbage reached so high
That finally it touched the sky,
And none of her friends would come to play,

 And all of her neighbors moved away;
And finally, Sarah Cynthia Stout
Said, "Okay, I'll take the garbage out!"

But then, of course it was too late,
The garbage reached across the state, 

From New York to the Golden Gate;
And there in the garbage she did hate
Poor Sarah met an awful fate
That I cannot right now relate
Because the hour is much too late
But children, remember Sarah Stout,
And always take the garbage out.