the garbage artist

Winter wasn't through with March.

The vernal sun at lunch time

at the missile base warmed

the dark bare fields and my face.

Demoted now

from Battery Commander's driver

to garbage separator at the mess hall

separating the edible from the inedible

into a battered garbage can.

I stood outside the doorway

to the kitchen listening to the men inside.

No words distinct enough to know

what anyone was talking about,

Just the mush mouth vowels of Alabama

and the twang of Texas in their voices,

boasting, boisterous, no doubt

full of conquest and bullshit.

Then they tumbled out of the dining hall

bearing their stainless steel trays

and pebbled plastic glasses

and half full mugs of lukewarm Army coffee.

And I began my task:

stacking cups and glasses into dishwasher racks,

scraping the remains of that day's Southern-themed cuisine

off the steel trays sectioned like giant tv dinners.

Clods of mashed potatoes, dotted with black-eyed peas.

A swash of succotash, gray shreds of over done pot roast

slices of white bread stained with pale country gravy

corn kernels floating in pink pools

of melted strawberry ice cream.

It all went in the can,

an ever-changing three dimensional construction

as I pretended to be a culinary Jackson Pollack.

A splay of wilted collard greens accented

with a scattered splash of corn.

The chitlins which had proven to be

less than popular with their pissy scent,

now a shiny beige to bomb with peas.

A magpie perched on the eaves above

screeched a complaint, beseeching me

to toss a crust, some morsel.

At thirteen hundred hours,

I stacked the trays and racks

of cups and glasses on a cart

and wheeled them into the kitchen

where Ahmet and Emre stood at the sinks

and pointed to the spot where they

wished me to leave the cart.

They were friendly now that I shared

the status of Turkish gastworkers.

I was free of duty til Taps would blow.

Free to bask out on the steps

and read my book.

If it hadn't been for Samuel Beckett

I don't think I could have done that gig.

Farmer Herzfeld drove his grumbling tractor

plowing the field beyond the base, 

awakening his sleeping soil.

Waved a leather-gloved hand.

He'd be back after evening chow

to collect the can of slops

to feed his hungry swine.