Your own little memory carol, Max?
You’re still not really near a white xmas, are you…
Doug
On Dec 24, 2014, at 12:17 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Happy holidays everyone from Max in Seattle
>
> (pining for a warm Melbourne…)
>
> Christmas Mails - and Females
> (Seattle 2014 / Auckland 1960)
>
> Postie, postie, don’t be slow -
> be like Elvis, go man go.
>
> Winter dark - parcels late
> via the Postal Service man
> reach these front doors in great
> piles - and still more in his van.
>
> Ah, those Decembers -
> my Auckland ones of old,
> hard slog, long hours
> (overtime, not badly-paid)
>
> standing in for Santa
> and his sack of parcels,
> before they needed a
> phrase like snail-mail,
>
> in suburbs I’d haunted
> as a schoolboy biking -
> now I was working -
> uniformed postie -
>
> as early as six a.m.
> doggedly sorting upstairs
> at the ‘Postmen’s Branch’
> alongside some smart
>
> women and less smart men;
> bundling the letters,
> packing my leather bag,
> shouldering it to the bus stop,
>
> munching a back-seat snack,
> getting down in such mild
> places as Sandringham,
> Balmoral (totally unlike
>
> the British places they were
> named after), trudging
> rain or shine, zigzagging
> their streets, circumventing
>
> their unkennelled dogs
> maddened by the postie’s whistle
> regulations insisted on;
> fielding the tiresome words
>
> from pensioners at their gates:
> anything for me but bills?
> Politeness might earn a gift
> come Christmas Eve -
>
> bright-wrapped chocolates -
> some boring card, more like.
> The parcels! vans had left
> bags of them at key spots -
>
> here postie crouches,
> repacks his bag, trudges on.
> Summer sun shines down,
> scorching brow, pate and neck.
>
> Later they’ll hurt, flake
> and peel, ears, neck
> and forearms. Pause to drink,
> orange juice preferred.
>
> Or while a rain-squall
> buckets down on him,
> he ducks to a veranda
> lurking for shelter,
>
> slipping from their wrapper
> Time Magazine,
> Playboy, or whatever
> furthers his education.
>
> Onward - sunshine breaks
> out - dogs and pensioners
> are watching at their gates.
> The mail goes through.
>
> Back at the Branch, sort
> mail till nine, joke, admire
> post-women’s tanned legs,
> their so-skimpy attire -
>
> uniforms not for them,
> insubordinate
> sisterhood, fastest
> workers - equal-paid.
>
> Postie, postie, don’t be slow -
> be like Elvis, go man go.
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
that we are only
as we find out we are
Charles Olson
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