In an accident of timing he walked in the door
at the very moment the VCR was playing his home run.
He stood next to me and watched himself as a young man
run jubilantly around those bases:
What was going through his head?
A displacement of time, a "warp," a vacuum when
the linear becomes the circular and then is now.
Where once it was the entire Giants team
waiting for him at home
(Mays, Irvin, Durocher, Lockman, Hartung)
tonight it's only the three of us to greet him
at this unfamiliar house.
Off with the VCR, leaving the trgedy that was Branca
(back tured to us, his number thirteen grinning like Death)
and Rube Ealker waiting behind the plate for the pitch
that never arrived.
The circle was completed when he touched home:
the circular returned to the linear,
the past to the present,
and it took off like a line drive
into the future.
(for Gerry, Jane and, of course, Bobby.)
Baseball I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life
Edited by Richard Grossinger and Lisa Conrad
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