outside

March 21, 2017 by Steve Myers 8 Comments

a deck of playing cards is scattered about my route to work
just like it was before the snow fell frozen,
stray numbers,
stray royalty.

i look up instead.

a satellite dish and a crow share a roof top.
makes me long for the order of a baseball diamond,
i go there,
but there are only partially underground dugouts,
3 feet underground dugouts,
abandoned,
a used condom and candy bar wrappers in the corner,
but it’s a kid’s crumpled up homework assignment that saddens me the most.

i think about cancer, name calling, depression, stubbed toes and all sorts of woes, but then i think about those cups we used as kids, the ones we connected with strings and communicated with one another and then i think about walkie-talkies and dugout phones and bullpen phones and a manager summoning something ancient from the bullpen ——the menagerie of a reliever, the circus of his hair, a messiah, an assassin, to climb the mound and prevent any further damage, to preserve it all, and in the next half inning,
to give us another chance,
one more chance,
and then one more,
over and over again.