Dust to Dust

There is a very old man on my street (I'm a fine one to talk) who comes around to collect the garbage. It is difficult to say how old this man might be. I'm thinking 100, maybe 130, something like that. Lol. He is a small old guy, brown skin baked nearly black by constant exposure to the sun, as wrinkled and inflexible as beef jerky, arms like knobby hardwood sticks, big black-framed spectacles perched on his nose beneath a permanent, floppy, discolored baseball cap. Up and down the broken street he goes, dragging a large burlap sack. This morning, he entered the gate and began to empty my garbage, already in a black plastic bag, into his own burlap sack. "Pak," I said, "just take the whole bag. You don't have to empty it into your own. I have more." He disagreed, likely unable to picture throwing away a perfectly good plastic sack. Moreover, upon emptying the one sack into the other, he proceeded to tidy up the patio area itself, emptying my ashtray, picking up bits of paper or leaves and adding them to his haul. "Pak," I said, "I can sweep. It's no problem. You can just leave the little bits." He disagreed. Such a thing is likely at odds with his own work ethic. And so he hobbles away, dragging his burlap bag, picking of bits of trash that he finds on the roadside. Louis had told me not to deal with this old guy, not to trust him, but I can't see why; for to me he seems the very salt of the earth, an animated dust rendered mindful--no different, essentially, than any of us, for from dust we came and to dust we shall return.