Civil Servants

May 24, 2017

“Mid-July Tripod Lookout” by John YohePosted by

John Yohe

MID-JULY TRIPOD LOOKOUT

around the rock island
butterflies aggregating
rubbing antennae

two robins attacking
a squirrel in white bark pine
for collected nuts

blue grouse startles
barely flying from a doug fir
into sage and lupen

light southwest wind
keeps flies off the catwalk
playing guitar on a bench

no clouds just one hawk
circling high in warm air
over High Valley

hummingbird hovers
snatching gnats from around radio antenna
dispatch broadcasting weather

monsoonal moisture
bringing thunderstorms by Sunday
chance of lightning

thinking about days off
in Boise with girls and women
emailing reviews

what to do come snow
where to live or travel
in October

—from Rattle #55, Spring 2017
Tribute to Civil Servants

__________

John Yohe: “On and off, I’ve worked for the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service for sixteen years as a firefighter and now a fire lookout.” (website)

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May 22, 2017

“Playing with Matches” by Jane WheelerPosted by

Jane Wheeler

PLAYING WITH MATCHES

They are hard to find, the strike anywhere kind
with the white tip you taught me to light
against the zipper of my jeans when I was six.

Once you set our kitchen aflame
hid in the long grass behind our house watching
it blaze, more fascinated than afraid.

Now, in the waltzing glow of my woodstove
I dare a safety match to flare,
flick it with my thumbnail and wonder:

Did your hands shake? Did you drop the box,
scatter matches like pick-up-sticks across the floor
before you fired up that Bunsen burner

and inhaled?

—from Rattle #55, Spring 2017
Tribute to Civil Servants

[download audio]

__________

Jane Wheeler: “For 25 years I issued driver’s licenses, titled vehicles, gave road tests, vision tests, renewal tests. Yes, I am the person who took that awful photo of you, or made you bring back your proof of insurance, or refused to renew your license because you had unpaid tickets. Although very few of my poems are directly related to that experience (no one would believe them), many are based on the people I met. All of them are short, written and revised in between customers.”

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May 17, 2017

“At the Forestry Institute, Hanoi” by Pepper TrailPosted by

Pepper Trail

AT THE FORESTRY INSTITUTE, HANOI

They are modestly proud of it
Their bomb crater, behind the greenhouses
They lead visitors out through the re-grown grove
Warning of mud and roots, where it waits
Water-filled, its clay walls braced with bamboo
Round as a temple cistern

December 1972, more bombs fell on Hanoi
Than on London during the Blitz
You can see the photos in the War Museum
On Dien Bien Phu Boulevard, by the Lenin statue
Block after block of small buildings, flat
Nothing standing but the people

A few steps from the crater is a bunker
Rounded, half-buried in leaves and soil
You can go inside and sit
Imagine the forester hiding there
As his rosewood trees burst and burned
Holding in his arms a metal box of seeds

—from Rattle #55, Spring 2017
Tribute to Civil Servants

[download audio]

__________

Pepper Trail: “For the past eighteen years, I have worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a forensic ornithologist, identifying bird remains that are evidence in wildlife crime investigations. This strange, rewarding, and troubling job brings me face to face with death every day of my working life. It has also taken me to places like Vietnam, where I worked on combatting the illegal wildlife trade, and wrote ‘At the Forestry Institute, Hanoi.’ I spend much of my free time in nature (my graduate work involved field studies of animal behavior), and many of my poems reflect my close observation of the living world.” (twitter)

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May 15, 2017

“The Codified Book” by Bradley ThomasPosted by

Bradley Thomas

THE CODIFIED BOOK

A new computer program was put in at work
Designed to track work from the point of creation of service
Through the hands of the clerk,
The inspector, the assistant director, the director,
Through to property development, taxes, public works,
Code enforcement, and the other various service providers
That will produce a planet-size worth of paper,
All of which our constituents will find at their door.

This means you and I are all very processed human beings
If you make the slightest move
To do anything of any significance in this world
The world will throw a codified book at you,
Tailored exactly for you, consisting of documentation for
Citations, writs, notices of violations,
Late income tax notices, lien notices,
Car tax notices, property tax notices,
Military draft notices, phone bills, light bills, food bills,
Natural gas bill, propane bill, fuel oil bill, pet bill, lawyer bill,
Doctor bill, pill bill, hospital bill, psychiatrist bill,
Sanitarium bill, psychiatric hospital bill,
And finally your funeral bill, which by the grace
You won’t have to see.

—from Rattle #55, Spring 2017
Tribute to Civil Servants

__________

Bradley Thomas: “My poetry comes from all aspects of my life including my work life. The following poems were created from my 24 years as a building inspection manager and my six years of experience working in the Water Resources Department for Fulton County government in Georgia. These poems are my reflection of my experiences as a public servant.”

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May 12, 2017

“Why We Climb Mountains” by Marti NoelPosted by

Marti Noel

WHY WE CLIMB MOUNTAINS

What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life.
—George Mallory

The ledge invites and frightens, loose gravel
scratching solid rock beneath your feet,
until the grating sound—the rasp and rattle—
is silenced as you step into complete
nothing, carabined between simple faith
and gravity. Will the tether hold?
There is a pull, a tension, in the fray
of scattered thoughts and fear of lost control
pressed against the weightlessness of free fall
on a stretch of braided rope. It takes skill,
and grit, to climb while clinging to sheer wall,
inching upward, pulled by strength and will;
but then, the descent offers you rebirth,
as you coil and push away from Earth.

—from Rattle #55, Spring 2017
Tribute to Civil Servants

__________

Marti Noel: “I am the property assessor in a small New England town. The work is challenging, where I encounter and work directly with a variety of property owners to address their concerns. The position provides insight into the political process of local regulation, but it can lack creative stimulation. I find that writing helps fill that gap.”

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May 10, 2017

“The Man Peeling Sweet Potatoes on Easter Morning” by Bruce NiedtPosted by

Bruce Niedt

THE MAN PEELING SWEET POTATOES ON EASTER MORNING

after Galway Kinnell

The man peeling sweet potatoes on Easter morning
looks frustrated, as though this is a task best passed
to others who really know what they are doing.
His wife is away on other errands and has deemed
him the stripper of skins, with nothing but a dull
vegetable peeler. Perhaps if he should microwave
them for five minutes, the dirt-brown husks
would pull away cleanly, even by tool-less hand.
The ends are hot and soft and peel more easily
but they burn his fingers, while the middle
is still too hard and resists a metal blade.
He is making a mess of this chore, and wonders
why his wife would entrust it to him, when he
could be watching baseball or writing poetry.
Perhaps today of all days he should have faith
that he will accomplish this goal of five pounds
of naked tubers, their bright orange souls
unprotected from the cruelties of the April air.
Sometimes it is easy to peel away defenses,
he thinks, and sometimes a toughness prevails.
Later, his wife will bake them in a casserole,
with cinnamon, brown sugar and marshmallow,
for a dinner that has taken three days to prepare,
and their aroma will rise from a hot square tomb
into the very reaches of heaven.

—from Rattle #55, Spring 2017
Tribute to Civil Servants

__________

Bruce Niedt: “I recently retired after 39 years as an employee of the Social Security Administration. (Yes, I served under the commissioner known as poet A.M. Juster.) My job involved much number-crunching, but even more important to me was my everyday face-to-face connection with the public and my ability to help them to get the benefits to which they were entitled. Their gratitude was what made it all worthwhile. Meeting people with a diversity of backgrounds and stories helped enrich the humanity of my writing, especially in my narrative and/or persona poetry.” (website)

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May 8, 2017

“Lada’s Lessons” by Arthur McMasterPosted by

Arthur McMaster

LADA’S LESSONS

She kisses him softly, and then aggressively so.
The more they come together the more he has to ask:
Is this woman yet my asset, or am I now her Joe?

Her husband, she told him, was working in Krakow
on something, she demurred, of a classified task.
She kisses him softly, and then aggressively so.

His network, with her help, would prosper and grow,
though the chance is great that their sex is just a mask.
Is this woman yet my asset, or am I now her Joe?

What he tells his bosses is strictly need to know,
and not that her motives are as woven as damask.
She kisses him softly, and then aggressively so.

He takes what she gives; he learns to take it slow.
He does not, yet he does, want this uncertainty to last.
Is this woman yet my asset, or am I now her Joe?

As Langley has instructed all seductions ebb and flow,
yet the more they come together the more he has to ask:
when she kisses me softly, and then aggressively so,
is this woman yet my asset, or am I now her Joe?

—from Rattle #55, Spring 2017
Tribute to Civil Servants

__________

Arthur McMaster: “I spent several years in the 1970s working for the Shoe Factory, for the Company, for the Agency. I was fairly young at the time, not to say naïve, but then we were all ‘young’ in one way or another, even the oldest and wisest of my Cold War colleagues. By naïve I suppose I mean we bought into the whole messianic calling bit. I was a Czech linguist and East Europe area specialist, and even now I look back to try to understand what the cost of it all was, and to whom. I write these poems, partially autobiographical, in some sense of penance.” (website)

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