By Philip Raisor
I carry my spikes and step on the field an hour
ahead of the others. Last day of March with April
offering tickets for the new season. I'm full of sun
on wet grass, in love with blistered benches.
A sparrow sits on the backstop, watching, ready
to dart if I catch its eye. I drop my bag on home plate
and swirl my foot in the dust the way my cousin does
with his fingers on the skin of a drum head. Next year
he'll be released with the others who spent mornings
breaking windows and trashing vacation homes
like drunks in the right field bleachers. Here, I'm alone
with a sparrow and the smell of a baseball morning
settling around me like a comforter. I start trotting
to first base, the ankles loosening, then the knees,
as the dust begins to lift into the breaking light.
Around second and third I stretch my arms
in a rotary motion ready to fly. A hand waves back
from a passing car, someone who knows me
or remembers rising one morning when the game
of who you are is played out in your mind,
and around you a stadium full of fans begs you
to do what you usually do in the clutch. The bat I pull
from the bag for the first time is my father's
Louisville Slugger, thirty-three inches, wood barrel.
I thought enough time had passed, the attic dust
hard in the grooves. I stroke it slowly like a weapon
you love to touch but would never use. He hit .304
at Omaha the season he was drafted, all-star
rookie-of-the-year. He said we'd join him soon.
Then that other draft. He would have been here.
I swear he would. The silence feels oppressive now.
I dig for a scuffed ball and throw it up, shoulder high,
but let it fall. A natural hitter, my father said, holding
my hands. I grip the tar-stained handle. Tears blur
the wall that's so far away it looks warped. I aim
for marrow deep inside, April hungry for the kill.
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Thursday was overcast but warmer than Wednesday, so I got a bunch of work done in the morning, then watched some of the World Figure Skating Championships over lunch (and also some basketball which we put on during commercials). The the Orioles had another spring training game, so anything I wrote today may have included sports metaphors, sorry!
We walked to Idylwood in the afternoon and chatted with friendly dog owners before I came home for my Thursday night chat, which ran long since we were all very chatty this week. Now we're watching the new episode of Resident Alien -- finally completely caught up! Here are some of the cherry blossoms at peak on the University of Washington's main campus:
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