Craig Paulenich - "Strange Loops"

"Beisbol has been berry, berry good to me."
— attributed to Saturnino Orestes Armas Miñoso

Me too.

Fireflied evenings,
the lawn mower's roar still
tingling the fingers,

we'd tune in
"Cleveland Indians Baseball,
brought to you by
Carling Black Label."

"Yoo-Hoo! Mabel! Black Label."

And from Cleveland, far across
the corn, smoking and chugging,
from the Mistake on the Lake,
anachronistically beautiful,
came baseball.

And we listened,
my father drinking pony bottles
of Black Label,
"dead soldiers" he would call them
when I was twenty and
working in the mill, pouring steel
in the sweltering days and still evenings.

When I came home
we would build a small fire
and catch a game from the coast.
But now, I am eleven and
my small glass is filled only once.