PAPER BALL AND BROOMSTICK BAT

Toad in Tree Root

(Note: If you would like to hear a "concept album," click on the title below.)

BACKYARD  BASEBALL

One of us poised near tree roots,
grasping a ball of twisted, wet paper
wrapped in rubber bands, the other, in front
of the shed door, waving a broken broom handle.

The ball flew like thought
from mound to shed, and both of us           Open a door.
connected, four or five times, whacking
it over the leafed-out fruitless mulberry

to plop in the neighbor’s yard. Like
super stars in a world series game,
for an afternoon we were sometimes one 
with bat and ball, clearly reading

the opposition. Then Dad died,
and you soon moved away. The tree 
rotted from within, a stump where
two toads made their home                       Open door #2. 

in the hollow roots, the eaves
of the shed dangling a long beehive,
the house finally abandoned. 
In the shed thick with webs, 

I found the broom handle
and stepped up to the plate.  As 
I swung the bat, I recalled
how you smacked the ball so sweetly

that it sailed high over
the tree, over the fence,
and kept flying to where                          Open door # 3.
we could never find it again.