Poetry
Rhinestone Charley Allen
Baseball
It's been years now
since I stared my daddy down
from the corner of the plate,
and I don't even know if his glove
is still anywhere around,
don't know if he could still get the speed,
the spin on the breaker
quite right.
There was a time when
every summer found Daddy and me,
salt from a day's sweat still
gleaming like stars on
our skin in the twilight
and Daddy pitching balls,
saying "one more good lick before supper,"
and me nodding in the box,
one hand thrown back
to ward off the ump.
With the wind-up,
Dad was Koufax or Gibson,
sometimes even Christy,
but me, I was always hugging tight
to the southpaw side of the plate,
eyes gleaming fierce,
but kind
taped on Gehrig number 4
peeling
off my soaked cotton back,
her let her go
and we connected
and Dad smacked his glove
against his leg,
scuffed his toe on the mound and tried
to look a little bit mad,
but then he'd smile and nod his head,
not a word as I trotted
around the shingles we used
for bases,
a home run to end
the night
always made supper
that much sweeter.
We don't have much to say anymore
when I call,
but really, we never did,
we talk about work,
he asks about school,
and every time he sounds a few years
older,
but every so often
I ask if the Yanks look good
this year,
and I hear him smile from across the wire,
can feel the years fade in his routine answer,
"not too bad, but they ain't '27 material"
and we talk for awhile about Lou
and the Babe,
Josh Gibson and Willie Mays,
like they were friends we saw
just the other day,
and when we hang up,
we never mention love,
but when we've been talking about baseball,
when we've been talking about Lou,
it somehow feels
just like
we have.
This poem appeared in Notations literary magazine, Murray State
University, 2004.
