Mayor's_Civic_Innovation_Award_to_the_Department_of_Sanitation_(15573901640)
The Teal Truck
by Dakota Donovan

The truck is bright teal
flying down the street
like its namesake duck.
But I do not duck when
I see you coming.
I am grateful, so grateful,
for you will take away
the leavings of the week
the vegetable peelings, sodden
tea bags, and the plastic,
metal, and paper that I have
sorted for separate disposal.
Oh, Earth Day, April 22, 1970,
if only we had listened sooner.
if only we had started sooner,
to right the wrongs we’ve
Inflicted on our beauteous planet.
Today, I celebrate workers at the
Los Angeles Sanitation Bureau,
who take away our remnants
and give us a clean slate
to start each week anew.
“Keep Los Angeles Beautiful”
the teal truck proclaims.
Nelson Algren said that loving Chicago
Is like loving a woman with a broken nose.
I say that loving Los Angeles is like
loving someone with a battered dream.
Each week, we dispose of our pieces
and the brave sanitation workers
take them away, and let us hope
for a better, less broken week ahead.

PHOTO: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti with Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation workers, who became the first recipients of his Civic Innovation Award (11/3/2014). They stand before some of the city’s beautiful teal-colored sanitation trucks. 

Stylish woman at the summer beach in a hot day

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dakota Donovan is a ghostwriter for the rich and famous who lives in Los Angeles. She’s had many wild and crazy experiences while working with celebrities to tell their life stories, and some of these strange-but-true tales appear in her Hollywood Ghostwriter Mysteries — starting with L.A. Sleepers. In other incarnations, she’s written novels, plays, screenplays, and television scripts. She’s currently working on L.A. Dreamers, the second novel in the Hollywood Ghostwriter Mystery series.