POETRY FRIDAY: A Poem by Philip Appleman

Here is a poem for the beginning of the year that I had planned to post last Friday—but we had no Internet access in the timeshare where we were staying with friends in New Hampshire. Happy New Year a week late!

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!”

You can read the rest of the poem here.

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At Wild Rose Reader, I have an original poem from my unpublished collection of memoir poems entitled A Home for the Seasons. I’ve also included five other poems from the collection that I posted previously.

Anastasia Suen has the Poetry Friday Roundup at Picture Book of the Day.