Alan Steinberg - "as if it were"

Cricket night:
walking in the lamplight,
me dog. Four and me
picking up the smell
of wet and yellow summer weeds
in the small and dark
vacant lot
which was the sandbox of
my Brooklyn Dodger days
when Edwin Donald Snider plays
the centerfield of life,
and always leaps against the dark black wall
of Ebbets Field and me
to snatch a round white ball
from unprotected hands
reaching eager from stands
then trots across the crayon grass
with the peanut hotdog popcorn breeze
billowing his Friday-night silky-shirt
pushing at that big blue number 4
until he sits down in the dugout
and draws my silky heart some more
every Brooklyn, crayon, peanut breezy night
into those rich but over days
when I played sneaker-footed ballgames
of my own, Edwin Donald Snidering
in this wet and weeded lot
and, walking later, Four and me
whiffed the summer streets
wet with summer rain
and I thought of love again and again
as if it were a Dodger Game
at Ebbets Field which
the Dodgers didn't win.