Poem for Tuesday and Bowie Baysox

By Cynthia Arrieu-King

A pink dozen sunshine trapezoids—
It's good to be breathing
says an array of rosemary shrubs.
A field of illicit rocks, shrapnel, bees, germs unknown.
Hands held. Back seats checked for sleeping.

I have made a Tuesday monument
of a baby's toothbrush lying on the sidewalk alone.

The far lake no one knows about, bitching its ripples.

In this case it
doesn't matter what other people need
in measures of solitude; You
need a few years, a few more years
alone. And it's such a popular
slur to hurl: You will always be alone.
I've been told that—
(Eight years ago.)

(And knowing slowly as I go how to hold a garden here.)

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Memorial Day was my father's birthday, so after a quiet morning while Adam played tennis with him, we picked my parents up around lunchtime and drove to Bowie to see the Baysox play the Altoona Curve. It was an insanely hot day, so despite the fact that we had second-row seats, we sat on the benches many rows back so we could stay in the shade. The Baysox are at the bottom of their division but they won 4-0, and there was a nice breeze out of the sun. We ate lots of peanuts and drank lots of water, and it was Bark in the Park day so the people sitting on either side of us had their adorable dogs with them. I love minor-league baseball -- the silly between-inning fan games, the speed of the innings, and we got to see a home run ball go sailing over the back wall -- so I enjoyed it a lot.


Daniel and my father got hot dogs at Prince George's Stadium.


It was a Bark in the Park day, so bowls of water were out for the four-legged visitors.


Since it was also Memorial Day, an Army officer sang the Star Spangled Banner.


And since it was my father's birthday, we had plenty of junk food.


The Baysox had a good game, including a home run by Zelous Wheeler, and we got to see the Orioles' Brian Roberts...


...as well as Endy Chavez who are both playing AA baseball while on injured reserve from the Major Leagues.


Louie, the Baysox mascot, rhymes with Bowie but we're not sure exactly what he's supposed to be, nor how he didn't collapse from heat exhaustion today.


Later we had strawberry pie for my father's birthday.

After the game, we went to Hamburger Hamlet with my parents, then we watched Hemingway & Gellhorn, which I largely disliked despite very good performances by several actors I like and a terrific performance by one actress I usually don't like. The show-offy filmmaking was not enhanced by the over-the-top dialogue -- yes, I know Hemingway and Gellhorn wrote those lines, but that doesn't mean they talked like that in casual conversation, and it only made the swearing and sex seem contrived for effect rather than real human behavior in the midst of the horrors of war. Owen's Hemingway was exactly as much of an asshole as I would have expected, which made his performance seem kind of predictable if reasonable; Kidman was much more memorable, but they left out so much of Gellhorn's life that it's not a biopic I'd recommend for that.