[AGL] Poem-a-day

[Kathy Doyle]

whoa! that's some poem! stealing it.
thanks B
On Mar 16, 2014, at 3:53 AM, Byron Allen Black wrote:


> I recently jined up with poemhunter.com. Most of what they offer is either woefully inept (members' poems) or stuff I already know (Robinson Jeffries for instance).

> 

> But today's offering from a guy I never heard of is a zinger. And kindly note that I personally have never given a shit about baseball:

> 

> 

> 

>  

>  

> Body and Soul 

> 

> Half-numb, guzzling bourbon and Coke from coffee mugs, 

> our fathers fall in love with their own stories, nuzzling 

> the facts but mauling the truth, and my friend's father begins 

> to lay out with the slow ease of a blues ballad a story 

> about sandlot baseball in Commerce, Oklahoma decades ago. 

> These were men's teams, grown men, some in their thirties 

> and forties who worked together in zinc mines or on oil rigs, 

> sweat and khaki and long beers after work, steel guitar music 

> whanging in their ears, little white rent houses to return to 

> where their wives complained about money and broken Kenmores 

> and then said the hell with it and sang Body and Soul 

> in the bathtub and later that evening with the kids asleep 

> lay in bed stroking their husband's wrist tattoo and smoking 

> Chesterfields from a fresh pack until everything was O.K. 

> Well, you get the idea. Life goes on, the next day is Sunday, 

> another ball game, and the other team shows up one man short. 

> 

> They say, we're one man short, but can we use this boy, 

> he's only fifteen years old, and at least he'll make a game. 

> They take a look at the kid, muscular and kind of knowing 

> the way he holds his glove, with the shoulders loose, 

> the thick neck, but then with that boy's face under 

> a clump of angelic blonde hair, and say, oh, hell, sure, 

> let's play ball. So it all begins, the men loosening up, 

> joking about the fat catcher's sex life, it's so bad 

> last night he had to hump his wife, that sort of thing, 

> pairing off into little games of catch that heat up into 

> throwing matches, the smack of the fungo bat, lazy jogging 

> into right field, big smiles and arcs of tobacco juice,

> and the talk that gives a cool, easy feeling to the air, 

> talk among men normally silent, normally brittle and a little 

> angry with the empty promise of their lives. But they chatter 

> and say rock and fire, babe, easy out, and go right ahead 

> and pitch to the boy, but nothing fancy, just hard fastballs 

> right around the belt, and the kid takes the first two

> but on the third pops the bat around so quick and sure 

> that they pause a moment before turning around to watch 

> the ball still rising and finally dropping far beyond 

> the abandoned tractor that marks left field. Holy shit. 

> They're pretty quiet watching him round the bases,

> but then, what the hell, the kid knows how to hit a ball, 

> so what, let's play some goddamned baseball here. 

> And so it goes. The next time up, the boy gets a look 

> at a very nifty low curve, then a slider, and the next one 

> is the curve again, and he sends it over the Allis Chalmers, 

> high and big and sweet. The left field just stands there, frozen. 

> As if this isn't enough, the next time up he bats left-handed. 

> They can't believe it, and the pitcher, a tall, mean-faced 

> man from Okarche who just doesn't give a shit anyway 

> because his wife ran off two years ago leaving him with 

> three little ones and a rusted-out Dodge with a cracked block, 

> leans in hard, looking at the fat catcher like he was the sonofabitch 

> who ran off with his wife, leans in and throws something 

> out of the dark, green hell of forbidden fastballs, something 

> that comes in at the knees and then leaps viciously towards 

> the kid's elbow. He swings exactly the way he did right-handed 

> and they all turn like a chorus line toward deep right field 

> where the ball loses itself in sagebrush and the sad burnt 

> dust of dustbowl Oklahoma. It is something to see. 

> 

> But why make a long story long: runs pile up on both sides, 

> the boy comes around five times, and five times the pitcher 

> is cursing both God and His mother as his chew of tobacco sours 

> into something resembling horse piss, and a ragged and bruised 

> Spalding baseball disappears into the far horizon. Goodnight, 

> Irene. They have lost the game and some painful side bets 

> and they have been suckered. And it means nothing to them 

> though it should to you when they are told the boy's name is 

> Mickey Mantle. And that's the story, and those are the facts. 

> But the facts are not the truth. I think, though, as I scan 

> the faces of these old men now lost in the innings of their youth, 

> it lying there in the weeds behind that Allis Chalmers 

> just waiting for the obvious question to be asked: why, oh 

> why in hell didn't they just throw around the kid, walk him, 

> after he hit the third homer? Anybody would have, 

> especially nine men with disappointed wives and dirty socks 

> and diminishing expectations for whom winning at anything 

> meant everything. Men who knew how to play the game, 

> who had talent when the other team had nothing except this ringer 

> who without a pitch to hit was meaningless, and they could go home 

> with their little two-dollar side bets and stride into the house 

> singing If You've Got the Money, Honey, I've Got the Time 

> with a bottle of Southern Comfort under their arms and grab 

> Dixie or May Ella up and dance across the gray linoleum 

> as if it were V-Day all over again. But they did not 

> And they did not because they were men, and this was a boy. 

> And they did not because sometimes after making love, 

> after smoking their Chesterfields in the cool silence and 

> listening to the big bands on the radio that sounded so glamorous, 

> so distant, they glanced over at their wives and noticed the lines 

> growing heavier around the eyes and mouth, felt what their wives 

> felt: that Les Brown and Glenn Miller and all those dancing couples 

> and in fact all possibility of human gaiety and light-heartedness 

> were as far away and unreachable as Times Square or the Avalon 

> ballroom. They did not because of the gray linoleum lying there 

> in the half-dark, the free calendar from the local mortuary 

> that said one day was pretty much like another, the work gloves 

> looped over the doorknob like dead squirrels. And they did not 

> because they had gone through a depression and a war that had left 

> them with the idea that being a man in the eyes of their fathers 

> and everyone else had cost them just too goddamn much to lay it 

> at the feet of a fifteen year-old-boy. And so they did not walk him, 

> and lost, but at least had some ragged remnant of themselves 

> to take back home. But there is one thing more, though it is not 

> a fact. When I see my friend's father staring hard into the bottomless 

> well of home plate as Mantle's fifth homer heads toward Arkansas, 

> I know that this man with the half-orphaned children and 

> worthless Dodge has also encountered for the first and possibly 

> only time the vast gap between talent and genius, has seen 

> as few have in the harsh light of an Oklahoma Sunday, the blonde 

> and blue-eyed bringer of truth, who will not easily be forgiven. 

> 

> B H Fairchild 


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