Last year's version of the mind-body problem:
my mind gives orders that my body won’t obey.
It’s a problem.
The body’s warranty has expired and
spare parts are scarce. Plastic tubes
To help me drain have become part of my day.
So there’s still a will. But sometimes no way.
I am now my sister’s age when she died.
And some nights
as I lie down in darkness
there’s a moment of wondering
could this be the night
of the Great Reckoning
when everything I’ve said and done
goes mute and I am gone.
And crawling over me like a slow stain
is dread that everything important in life
has already happened. I remember some days
less than my dreams.
But friend, not this tone!
Let us write a history of now.
Body and soul, stand up and shout
“Baseball road trip!”
Car: check. Best friend: check. Nostalgia for a simpler
time. We can fake that one.
The red zigzags on our map turn into places:
Six ballparks in a week.
Detroit haze, gasping Chicago wind,
Milwaukee self-serve micro brew
Cincinnati chili and watering eyes,
Cleveland’s defiant self-love,
Pittsburgh’s Primanti brothers monstrosity sandwich—
Burger, coleslaw, and fries on toast.
The American dream tastes like fast food,
But the mystery lives between the lines.
Thwack of fastball into catcher’s glove,
Whock! of line drive into the gap,
Ball rolling free across the green
While the runner speeds for home.
Home.
Let’s keep going, friend.
There’s another bridge up ahead and
a ballpark’s lights shining somewhere in the dusk
of the upper Midwest and the open road
unrolls toward the setting sun.
