Flowers For Socrates

by Nona Blyth Cloud

After the frantic weeks from Thanksgiving to New Years, we’re all ready for that “long winter’s nap” we never got in December.

But in the U.S., that can be hard to come by. Most of us lead lives that are much too busy to take time off to recuperate from the “time off” we just had for the holidays.

There’s an inevitable let-down in January, and many of us are feeling the effects of too-short hours of daylight, and long dark nights. But there are still things worthy of admiration and wonder even in the bleak cold of January.

Here’s a tribute to some especially hard-working Americans, whose work is never appreciated enough — our society wouldn’t run very well without them, as anyone who has been through a garbage strike can attest:

To the Garbage Collectors in Bloomington, Indiana, the First Pickup of the New Year

BY PHILIP APPLEMAN 

(the way bed is in winter, like an aproned lap,
like furry mittens,
like childhood crouching under tables)
The Ninth Day of Xmas, in the morning black
outside our window: clattering cans, the whir
of a hopper, shouts, a whistle, move on …
I see them in my warm imagination
the way I’ll see them later in the cold,
heaving the huge cans and running
(running!) to the next house on the street.

My vestiges of muscle stir
uneasily in their percale cocoon:
what moves those men out there, what
drives them running to the next house and the next?
Halfway back to dream, I speculate:
The Social Weal? “Let’s make good old
Bloomington a cleaner place
to live in—right, men? Hup, tha!”
Healthy Competition? “Come on, boys,
let’s burn up that route today and beat those dudes
on truck thirteen!”
Enlightened Self-Interest? “Another can,
another dollar—don’t slow down, Mac, I’m puttin’
three kids through Princeton?”
Or something else?
Terror?

A half hour later, dawn comes edging over
Clark Street: layers of color, laid out like
a flattened rainbow—red, then yellow, green,
and over that the black-and-blue of night
still hanging on. Clark Street maples wave
their silhouettes against the red, and through
the twiggy trees, I see a solid chunk
of garbage truck, and stick-figures of men,
like windup toys, tossing little cans—
and running.

All day they’ll go like that, till dark again,
and all day, people fussing at their desks,
at hot stoves, at machines, will jettison
tin cans, bare evergreens, damp Kleenex, all
things that are Caesar’s.

O garbage men,
the New Year greets you like the Old;
after this first run you too may rest
in beds like great warm aproned laps
and know that people everywhere have faith:
putting from them all things of this world,
they confidently bide your second coming.

As dreary as January can be, there are still wonders out there, for those with the patience to discover them:

The Cranes, Texas January

BY MARK  SANDERS

I call my wife outdoors to have her listen,
to turn her ears upward, beyond the cloud-veiled
sky where the moon dances thin light,
to tell her, “Don’t hear the cars on the freeway—

it’s not the truck-rumble. It is and is not
the sirens.” She stands there, on deck
a rocking boat, wanting to please the captain
who would have her hear the inaudible.

Her eyes, so blue the day sky is envious,
fix blackly on me, her mouth poised on question
like a stone. But, she hears, after all.
……………………………… January on the Gulf,
warm wind washing over us,
we stand chilled in the winter of those voices.

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