In the middle of this infinite sprint,
sometimes I need to walk to the library
and read all the baseball books backwards.
This ruins a skyscraper, or the reverse,
but it’s a process that helps me stand everything
I can hold in my hand before the bubble bursts.
This is like what quitting drugs does:
Solves one big problem, microscopes the others.
Water soaking the wood floor.
Considering suicide before I fearlessly go
for each crazy dream I might like.
Squeezing rubber duckies in an electric bath
until they squeak air. Meanwhile, a toy dog
resolves to become a real one, but the real dog,
handcuffed by the interest rates on acreage,
only wants to lay on the roof,
his shingles glitzed with morning frost
and white ravens perched on his paws.
The slobbered baseballs in Mr. Mertle’s junkyard
are no more. The depressed
are improvising smiles with lipstick, extended.
It’s hard to throw anything with these
waterlogged Alexas; hard to see the ballpark
for its emptiness. Try resolving to log more stars
while some God sparks his cigar
and ashes on your toddler.
The tender hands of time have become
cracked and wrinkled. Arthritic.
The sun-stained day in LoDo with my son
where we watched the bearded outfielder
slug wonderfully for nearly no one is done.
What we will remember of us is air hunger.
If you swing and miss, swing again: That’s what Ruth did.
His high, arching flies often held in by the wind.