Things I've seen along the road

When you ride a bicycle, whether there is a bike lane or not, the right edge of the road, both on the road surface and in the ditch, are where discarded things collect: metal, plastic, wood, and things decomposing. It is in that section between black top and gravel, shrubs, are where  trash, cast off or lost clothing, and unclaimed  humans settle blown in by the wind.

I've seen:

Plastic gas cans,
empty jugs for oil, antifreeze, and transmission fluid,
juice, cheap vodka, energy drinks;
plastic wrap and diaper covers;
plastic pants, plastic rain coats, a purple plastic belt ;
a plastic grill from a Subaru with a stick driven through it;
and plastic bags flying like windsocks
in the dark forests of the northwest
or waving from the spines
of cholla cactus--next to the remains of a desiccated collared lizard impaled
and left to cure by a bird--on the over-grazed government lands in New Mexico.

There is wood:
dimension lumber: 2x4s, planks, a 10inch wide beam maybe 16 ft long;
plywood sheets, a square of cedar shakes;
and logs spilled from logging trucks,
some smashed through standing trees
others plowing divots of black earth,
reasserting P=MV of classic mechanics;
and a stick rammed thru the plastic grill of a Subaru.

If all the metal I have seen were recycled we could re build the Titanic.
There was a metal beam (see P=MV above);
a roll of copper wire;
and auto parts: mufflers, tailpipes, fenders,
springs, the burned hull of a semi truck,
a chrome fender wrapped around the base of a fir tree;
and lots of screws and nuts: wing nuts, lug nuts, square nuts, hexagonal nuts,
locking nuts and one nut (with a long beard) who should have remained locked up.

Clothing like ball caps, socks, shirts, skirts, underwear, and
the waist band of a pair of jeans with a purple belt still cinched.
Tennis shoes, running shoes, logging boots, cowboy boots, ballet slippers, clogs,
none paired, presumably lost by a man called "Peg leg Slim?"

Live and dead animals,

all families represented, mammalian, reptilian, avian, insects, and many genera of insects
perhaps even one or two that might have been the last of a hitherto undiscovered species,
one salmon miles from the ocean,
and a dead moose (no auto parts nearby).
No dead humans--even at the tree with the fender wrapped around its trunk--but some
that were like the walking dead,
a man with a long beard, who yelled skyward and gesticulated with his arms and hands, his fingers wiggled independent like soon to hatch snakes in opaque white tubes,
and a teen girl who pedaled past me crying.

There are miscellanea
like combs, a hair piece,
a ripped sleeping bag (that I checked for human remains),
tie-down straps, bungee cords, rope,
a freshly branded calf,
tires, old and new, one still mounted on a rim,
car and truck axles, 
hitch hikers,
and gnats, flies, mosquitoes, that are not a problem until you're pedaling uphill.



Future archeologists or anthropologist will sift through this accumulation of junk and then after, in the lab, writing up their notes, have an orgasm describing such things as religious artifacts, language, signs that we believed in reincarnation.