24/7 Buzz

Late evening

Lights dimmed ship-wide
Passageways from bright white to red glow

Soft yellow lights in the hangar bays
deceptively hide the din of precision activity

But, look more closely

Mechanics with wrenches under copter blades
torquing and adjusting things to be just right
Pallets moving slowly and silently atop humming
forklifts from corner to corner- stacks of them
growing
Ordinance specialists concentrating,
checking voltage levels on wire harness bundles
under fighter wings and fuselages

Hourly, the hangar bays reconfigure,
change their features and appearances

Planes move
A temporary post office springs up, packages in rows
Auxiliary power units repositioned
Units of sailors mustering
The silhouettes of boxes of equipment and supplies,
barrels of oil stacked ten feet high become
their own small city landscapes
(If you videoed this, played it back fast forward,
This place would be a bee hive, buzzing
Not haphazard, but finely orchestrated)

Twenty four hours, day and night…
…every day and night – continuously