Ira Slotkin - "More Than A Game"

Saturdays we'd play catch in the back yard before dinner.
I was 10
standing with my back against the beige
concrete ash pit.
Toss and catch…toss and catch…toss and catch
rhythmic, relaxing
hand to glove to hand to glove
simple, silent, serene space
between throws.

Sometimes I'd sense Pop getting wound up:

narrowing eyes, subtle twist of lip,
nervous rotating of the ball,
nod
to invisible catcher,
…dramatic pause…

Without asking
I'd crouch down, fist-smack
my glove, make a target,
scared,
because he always threw harder when he pitched.

Afterward he'd reminisce
about pitching semi-pro, how
to place rosined fingers just so
on the stitches, how to release the ball,
how his wrist wouldn't withstand
twisting because he played
First Violin in the orchestra, and piano.
" I had to choose," he'd say, voice trailing off,
a barely audible note bowed ever so softly.
And so he quit baseball.

Decades pass. Intermission at the symphony,
a seventh inning stretch
after a superb concerto,
Pop tells me a story

about a summer he had a chance
to play piano with
a dance combo at a Catskills resort.
"This is not music befitting my eldest son,"
his father told him sternly. Pop persisted.
"You want to play modern music?
You don't want to play violin?
Then don't."
And he
took the instrument
and smashed it against my father
who never again
touched a
violin.

A calm telling, a telling calm,
like an easy toss before a pitched battle.
Yet in the stillness -
the whoosh and crack of the bat as it swung and struck,
the sting penetrating the padded glove of time.
And I understood: from a mound of ashes
Pop would

reach back
raise rosined bow
place fingers just so on strings
nod to
an invisible conductor, and
…putting a little something extra on the ball …
play.