Peak Performance
A Kentucky native poet offers a loving ode to all the shade-tree mechanics out there.
Hands-on mechanical expertise
Understood the engine’s needs
Working beneath the shady trees
Caressing the pistons and plugs
To get the truck running again
So when the sun went down
It could be driven and parked
In the quiet and the dark
Where the same hands
Fumbled
Through the frustration
Of bodily desires
That could not be brought
To peak performance
During his 22-year military career — and then again when he was earning his MFA from the University of Tampa — Ben White thought he was a poet. Silly Ben, he's not a poet at all. He is a witness. What he writes is testimony. Along with various stories, poems, and essays published in a wide range of journals, Ben is the author of “Conley Bottom: A Poemoir,” “The Recon Trilogy +1,” “Say Their Names” (under anonymous), and “Always Ready: Poems from a Life in the U. S. Coast Guard.”