Rolling Through Intersections

The Unnatural

Until The Stars…

Realization, romantic now, how
I play handball against a wall called myself

lone boy, summer standing, in sweet scent
of shorn grass, twinkling yet

the season’s last dew, and tossing
a red-relaced dream from her sewing needle,
recovered a hard ball — spun, lobbed
to his pitch edge, but not over the roof
of his self-constructed garage — with consideration
for respect, demanded and deserved —

from just a boy learning…

how a small, round object behaves at apex,
clips the tar top, drop and settle soft
onto a smattering maze of puzzled shingles —
hop, roll, skip, bounce, squib
side-to-side unevenly until — lay down —
let gravity do the rest, certain enough speed,
snowball-cannonball toward the ready mitt,
knowing it need clear aluminum bothered by my objects
far more burdensome than rainwater

To see it clear from practiced pride, a satisfying love,
I caught like hope in that open hand.

And, winked like the old man, with deserved joy
that hid in a hard heart,u never sharing his love
of that small game that perfectly lands,
repeated again and again until night, past dusk,
two meals quick consumed in an eager belly,
toss and toss again before black torment…
time to go in

He’ll not see the man now that still loves like a boy

He witnessed a child game, but now can
comprehend the most impossible mechanics
with physical abilities like his construct —
that two-by-four, nailed suspension that atop crested
a brick pattern on tarpaper overlay —
epidermal pate of his pride, the soft layer
that allows me yet play, stand in wheat-like weed
and decay, heave to his yet stable object,
receive again and again, as the diverted rain,
next to an upheaval of an ancient driveway

Grit sheds, gets the head from a gray-pale petroleum surface —
functional interlace, burdened by my spun magic,
twinkling like permanence of stars overhead.
All angles, speeds, degrees of difficulty, easy game
with or without the degraded leather —
either hand, behind back, over the Willie-shoulder —
perfection of all long past popcorn and late stretch,
extra innings I go, in his outdoors…cold, and in love

If you’ve ever watched at all, found pleasure in positive pursuit,
despite storms and winters, inter-cedents with other pursuits, know…
in persistent, constant, self-evaluating, evolving correction —
toward the impossible need to present as your ideal of perfection —
I’ll make the best of all installed until the stars fall.


Part of 2024 eulogy
For my brother