c-c-changes

8:97 is the time frame of today’s poem.

Actually some news to report. One - before I get to add another update, I will be working for International Paper. The take-over is supposed to happen on Aug. 4th. I’ll be on night shift, 5th handing (yuk), on overtime that week. I suspect it’ll be more a symbolic change for the first few months than anything major, other than new names on the paychecks and paper rolls.

Two- the other big change (and really bigger for me), is I have decided to try to work in a different department of the mill. It took some behind the scenes negotiating (I am really amazed that some union officials actually went to bat for me and while they didn’t get the rules rewritten, they did get around the rule that was preventing me from going to the shipping department and giving that a try. And obviously the company had to agree, so it appears they worked out something that worked for both of them, to my benefit.) I am scheduled to start training in shipping the 11th of August, which is also the first day of my vacation. So, don’t know how that will work exactly, but I am certain it won’t become an issue. Now all I need is my knees and neck to hold out on a Hyster for the next half-dozen or so years. (The idea was to get off my feet and quit plugging core so my shoulder wouldn’t ache all the time, as it does now on the winder area of the paper machine. Time will tell how well the great scheme works out, I guess.) Anyway, now to the poetry.



YOU SPEAK SILENCE WELL

you speak silence well.

fog is on the river tonight.
to curse it is futile,
but i curse it anyway, as i have cursed your ambivalence.

the wind writes no sonnets
on the bills of the egret,
one leg on his dark stump
beside the shallows.

i pull my collar tight,
shiver as i watch
the graffiti artists work
the darkness
behind the performing arts center,
as we all work in the thick darkness,
some more rewarding than others.

no pens in old mugs on your table,
no fibre optics connect our lives -
you dance angelically without audience,
upon the stage of the self ....

indeed, you speak silence well.