“Don’t spend your life lying on sheets that sweat,”
The Hassid said. “Meditation is a joy, even
When you peek at the clock.” Maddux won last night,
Evening his record at eight and eight. Spent some time
Calculating what he needs to reach 300 and his schedule
For the rest of the month and into August. Something to savor,
How he has come back from that 0 and 3 start, though his ERA
Is still over four. All’s right with America so long as Maddux wins.
It’s been that way my entire life. Jerry West. Koufax into his stretch.
Mean Don Drysdale coming from the side. The time I ran away
To Philadelphia as a teenager and fell down weeping on seeing
Old Shibe Park as I turned the corner. My hero, number 53, in Dodger
Blue, matched up with sliver lips Jim Bunning, both of them throwing
Goose eggs and the game going into extra innings. After midnight,
Sitting hungry in the dark bus, the man across the aisle saying,
“You spitting at me, man?” as a harbinger of things to come.Here this morning, on the subway, a child lit with life and her attentive
Mother, their interaction more engaging than the New Yorker story
I was reading. At Seventy-second Street I changed to the express.
Sudden anger hearing the yip yap man cataloging the things of his life—
Wife and family, all that stuff. But changed the channel, remembering
The Pink Panther movie a few nights before. Elke Sommer something to see.
Still, not sure the flick held up. I know that Sellers is gone. What about her?Another thing: An Iraq war vet, twenty at most, just back from a six-month
Tour of service. His head still shaved. Had trouble speaking. Stuff just too impacted.
Tattooed women gave him hugs before excusing themselves for dinner.
“It’s like a movie,” he shouted at the oncoming trucks.
How to relate this to 1968, Tommy Brannigan in his Vietcong pajamas
In a decompression rant in the apartment we shared on Amsterdam Avenue,
Down the block from the Columbia engineering building.
At the lunch hour will buy a birthday card for my drifting nephew,
My dead brother’s son. I know just what I’ll write.
I wonder where you are. Might as well be direct.
The time has come for that.July 2003