M A Schaffner
Clerk, QM Dept., 1864
A steady thunder complements the hooves
of carriage horses and streetcar’s steel wheels.
We go about our summer tasks, changing
kerchiefs and collars as the heat requires,
and wonder if a slightly surcharged pen
displays courage or our usual desire
to appear unimpressed. The thunder
continues – a kind of heat lightning Zeus
might envy. The guns of Fort Stevens strike
at suburbs and scenery – anywhere
marksmen might hide, turning the District’s farms
into the waste we’ve made of Virginia,
also in our name. But everyone stays
resolutely blase. Watches show time
continues as the sound waxes and wanes
teasingly with humidity, not range.
A message comes for the Chief Clerk. Frowning,
he urges us to finish our returns
and report to the Arsenal. This is
what Cincinnatus did, I try to think,
then lock my desk, the last line of defense.
of carriage horses and streetcar’s steel wheels.
We go about our summer tasks, changing
kerchiefs and collars as the heat requires,
and wonder if a slightly surcharged pen
displays courage or our usual desire
to appear unimpressed. The thunder
continues – a kind of heat lightning Zeus
might envy. The guns of Fort Stevens strike
at suburbs and scenery – anywhere
marksmen might hide, turning the District’s farms
into the waste we’ve made of Virginia,
also in our name. But everyone stays
resolutely blase. Watches show time
continues as the sound waxes and wanes
teasingly with humidity, not range.
A message comes for the Chief Clerk. Frowning,
he urges us to finish our returns
and report to the Arsenal. This is
what Cincinnatus did, I try to think,
then lock my desk, the last line of defense.
M A Schaffner is a civil servant in Washington with poems in Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Spoon River Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry Ireland, and The Rialto, a collection - The Good Opinion of Squirrels - and a novel, War Boys.
Page(s) 69
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