Cover Art: The Lake, by Dastid Miluka. Acrylic on canvas, 2012, 122cm x 102cm. Private Collection. For inquiries about this piece, please contact us at art@thebrusselsreview.com.

60 Year Reunion

The few of us all got together in the cabin up north in Michigan
and passed away

into snow stories
maybe we were just words, intersecting letters

waiting out the blizzard with a shared crossword puzzle
at the table under the kitchen window

waiting for the spaghetti to boil
using up the tomatoes canned the last summer for winter sauces

the toboggan for pulling in supplies from the cars
leaned like a crying soldier against the storage shed out back.

 

Epilogue Ride: 2023

I see them drawn out
charcoals, soft outlines
I can’t fill in
beaded, braided
catching a ride in a van
quite over the vanishing point
an illusion
of hitchhikers off the road
over the flat horizon
maybe pouring soil into hanging baskets for their screened porch–

as far as doing it again
times are different now, my flower.

 

History Is A Grandmother By Heart

History is a grandmother by heart, the breath of her sayings
getting weaker as we gathered around on chairs
that dragged time
long ago squeals against the tile floor
when you thought visiting hours were over
leaning in.

 

How To Recover A Summer Day

How to recover a summer day when you are seventy-one
and don’t own any baseball mitts
and the last spoonful of Mickey’s cereal and milk
already
is down
his chin
into the counting puddle on the kitchen table

and you’d already mounted up on department store bikes
already had peddled three blocks to the school
the diamond behind the evergreen row
where you had already tapped the plate
like when the band teacher was about to start something–

Pray for a good one
and dig into the earth.

 

On The Death Of Dick McAuliffe

We lined up at the mound of Memorial Field
with its old fence rattling and flag pole clanging behind the rarity of 3rd,
the baffling outfield behind us, where taller grass twined-up home runs in its scrubby web,
a magnificence that took three of us to chase down like crickets on a hill

We were just boys, with matching caps on the sizeless grounds of summer
wool uniforms, seasons old, that smelled like Kyle’s garage, hovering,
in line with only bicycle blocks of curbs and guesses about meeting Dick McAuliffe
whose stance we became, holding our bats up to the morning moon positioned in the sky

Yet, just like him, we had a number on our back
community shirts, stained with shortcomings, and tucked deep into baggy britches
that chafed and itched and, I swear, slowed us down
even though someone, maybe good, once wore them

The musty fibers, the loom of little league fame,
threaded the days and games that belonged to all of us
like baseball string wrapped over with tape and just left on the field
as if invisible when we had to go home at the end of the even day

But when June appeared ready on the go-seek count of ten
it was already sorting out what we’d be like as men
long before we’d gotten up close to this real Tiger
we realized we would never be as good as him

He signed his name on the thumb of my mitt
Dick McAuliffe #3
this adult who played just like us
except he was on TV

Yet when, nearly sixty years later, I read about his death
I wondered about baseball time and space and where that mitt existed
for we were just boys, numbers on our backs, with days that belonged to all of us
and he was sizeless on the grounds of summer ahead of me by only thirteen seasons.

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