The last baseball game.
Two outs. Bottom of the 11th. Bases loaded.
Renteria raps the ball through the infield, and a runner prances home,
and dancing men cover the green grass on the screen,
and I feel an inward shudder followed by sadness.
The game is over.
Another summer is over.
I think of all the things we planned to do --
the fantasies of driftwood camp fires under moonlit skies,
the trout we would coax from crystal streams,
the trips to the zoo, the games of catch, the sunset picnics,
But gnawing rodent time and parasite routine chewed the pages off the
calendar:
June, July, August ...
Now rain and leaves splatter on the skylight.

The phone rings.
An old friend from high school. From 30 years ago.
I fear he wants to talk about old times.
It happens. You're alone at night with a bottle of wine or a tumbler of
bourbon,
and nostalgia grabs you by the throat.
Hello, how are you, how've you been, he says.
But then he sobs.
He's been fired from his job. He's moved to Iowa to take a new one.
His wife and daughter are back in Wisconsin.
He's snowbound. Baseball’s just now over but it’s winter where he is.
He's spent the day in bed with a woman,
and he's crying because he wants to get divorced.
But he's afraid,
because he knows divorce is like an amputation,
and the missing part will keep on itching once you cut it off.
Even though you had to cut it off.
I listen but there’s nothing I can tell him.

Above my desk I've scotchtaped pictures of my children,
Smiling, faces dappled by summer sun.
It's late at night, but their bunks upstairs
are empty, of course.

It's hell, being snowbound.

 
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