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| A federal report on the noise impact of F-35 jets on the area surrounding the Burlington International Airport is delayed again. Noise exposure information due from the Federal Aviation Administration regarding the F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter jets was due in December, then February. Now, according to airport officials, the information will be publicly available—tentatively—next month. —Burlington Free Press, March 14, 2019 |
The cemetery and the dairy face off against each other
on the winter-potholed two-lane road that runs
between two towns that aren’t really very big.
The F-35s are coming to the most populated part
of the state with the politicians’ blessings. On those wings
hang jobs, a possibly spotty safety record, and cost over-runs
that bring the war machine to where
the cemetery and the dairy face each other
on a first warm spring day. The flags
in the cemetery reflect winter tatter
and the pasture grass for the cows
is brown. Someone on the radio
states that the new planes are four times
louder than the F-15s that left town
on Saturday, but whose brain can multiply
sound and decibels well enough to imagine that?
Suspicious why the FAA hasn’t issued
those sound maps, where the four times
as loud will be suffered. One man half-heartedly
blames the government shut down. The kids
in the school haven’t had their exercises yet
for when the noise terrifies them. They are
busy having their regular old active-shooter
drills. Even when the pasture grass is brown
and the flags on the cemetery are winter torn.
Tricia Knoll lives directly in the flight path of the F35s that will be stationed at the Vermont Air National Guard. She is a poet who is very tired of war machines, bellicose wall builders and those who seek to jail young children.