Those Nights

POETRY

by James P. Cooper

Nearly any summer night,
when I step outside to feed the strays,
could be a good one, once again,
for standing at the nose
of a KC-135 loaded with fuel,
nothing but prairie in the darkness
outside the fence line. Overseas,
I guarded three nuclear bombs,
each one attached to the jet fighters
parked in their bright hangars,
both ends open, while I slouched
in my dark gate shack, the door open,
my feet propped up, with nothing
to occupy my head but the sensation
of listening to the radio tucked
in my clothes; the music, rising and fading
like an engine on the run-up pad,
ended at 2:00 a.m., six hours before
a pick-up truck dropped off my relief.