A purple and orange sunrise illuminates Coos Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Frito Lay delivery driver, a young woman,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
wearing a ponytail<\/p>\n\n\n\n
half a blue uniform,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
rolls up the squeaky back door,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
climbs inside the truck,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
goes to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She’s delivering to my grocery store<\/p>\n\n\n\n
every Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elmer and I walk past every week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She occasionally nods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I nod back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve been writing a lot of poems of late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finding others forgotten, mothballed, frozen, stuck in the mud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One hundred and forty-five for this collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The image of a woman carting a tote of potato chips,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a purple and orange sunrise glowing overhead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
screams silently for a poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I haven’t written a single poem in 30 years<\/p>\n\n\n\n
about the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is one staring me in the face<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and I can see her face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What do I know about the working class<\/p>\n\n\n\n
to attempt a poem about them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
American politicians know nothing of this delivery driver and her work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
American poets even less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We turn the corner at the tackle shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How did she become a Frito Lay’s delivery driver? What is the job like? What does it pay? How many hundreds of pounds of product does she carry into stores on her route?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What about the woman down the block making donuts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman in Subway slicing turkey and ham?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The meat cutter vaping something on a break?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The drywaller spackling paste?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The crew at the automotive repair shop up the block who fixed my car?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The elderly school bus driver driving her route?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gas station attendant who plays Charlie Parker?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All these people are working within a hundred yards of me\u2014right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can see them at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Poets don’t write poems about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Walt Whitman did. He celebrated their lives in wild verse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No, I don’t care who they voted for President, or if they even voted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That story has already been told by white sharecroppers who sided with plantation owners<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and enlisted in the Confederate Army<\/p>\n\n\n\n
or the Dust Bowl farmers who voted for Herbert Hoover and Wendell Willkie<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and cursed the New Deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s a futile exercise in journalism<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and sometimes I prefer mystery over journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not in this case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I want to meet this Frito Lay delivery driver,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
tell her I want to write a poem about her, the job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just walk up and introduce myself, Elmer,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
take my shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A sunrise like this morning might help the cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A purple and orange sunrise illuminates Coos Bay. A Frito Lay delivery driver, a young woman, wearing a ponytail half a blue uniform, rolls up the squeaky back door, climbs inside the truck, goes to work. She’s delivering to my grocery store every Wednesday morning. Elmer and I walk past every week. She occasionally nods. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coos-bay","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}