Pile of Gravel

The setting:

The majority of houses on my street don't have driveways, so people park on both sides of the street, wherever they can find space.  The street is narrow enough that when cars are parked on both sides, only one car can get through at a time.  This makes parallel parking challenging too, when there are more cars parked in one area.

The conflict:

One day, a pile of gravel appeared alongside the street across from my apartment, in front of my neighbor's yard.  There is no sidewalk on that side of the street, and the rather large pile of gravel was placed in the road next to the curb, taking up as much space as at least two-thirds of a vehicle parked on the street. (Not to mention that the pile of gravel was now located basically exactly where I normally like to park.)  The pile of gravel remained there for weeks.  Two times, I saw my neighbors approach the pile of gravel with a wheelbarrow, load some of it in, and take it into their backyard.  The size of the pile of gravel was not greatly diminished.  One day, early in the morning, I heard the horrendous sound of metal scraping cement outside my house.  But when I looked outside, to my joy, two men were shoveling the pile of gravel into a city truck!  And they took it away!  The street was free again!  Alas...only about three days later, a new and even larger pile of gravel appeared in the same place.
It has not changed size or shape since, except to release portions of rocks randomly across the road so they are strewn everywhere, and the rocks are just large enough that stepping on them is uncomfortable and unsettling.  Sometimes people accidentally or ambivalently drive over part of the gravel pile, making its distribution worse.  It's been there for weeks since being replaced and I've never seen it used for anything once.  Many times when I park my car, I say to myself, "Why is it there??" as I back up along the curb, trying to figure out if I'm about to hit it, and when I get out of the car, it turns out I'm still 5 feet away.  Or I park in front of it (behind it?), forget it's there, and drive into it, joining myself to those-who-make-everything-worse.  Mick and I fantasize about putting all the rocks in my neighbor's yard.  Or putting a sign in the pile of rocks.  It would say, "Who do these rocks belong to?  If no one claims them in 3 days, the rocks will be removed."  Or, "Rocks are not a car."  Or just, "????"

To relieve my ridiculous emotions about this mound of rocks, I wrote a poem.

The poem:

pile of gravel

you grate on me

every time I drive down the street to park my car

pile of gravel

your heavy misshapen vehicular form

grossly displaces the shimmering red hatchback

who forlornly lumbers, reeking of misery

to a stringently encased blank zone of pavement elsewhere

pieces of you break off

meandering down the street

forcing me to sway about as I step on them

when I enter and exit the vermillion dome

pile of gravel

my heart festers with craving to take a giant shovel to you

to dramatically grip its handle

satisfactorially swinging you

mass by weighed down mass

you shall be changed

in the twinkling of an eye

at the last trumpet

into a brand new excellent pile made whole

finally at home on the lawn of your master

utterly removed from where my car longingly desires to make its nightly abode

in the meantime
pile of gravel
麻烦你，可不可以搬家放在那边？
("Could I trouble you to move over there.")


Edit 9/14: Of course, after weeks and weeks (months), one day after I posted this, the rock pile is removed!!! Yay!!!  However, I'll fully rejoice when it's gone for more than 3 days. =)