Posts for June 18, 2022 (page 8)

* Since 1876 there have been appx. 225,000 official major leage baseball games.
There have been 104 ” immaculate innings” 9 straight strikes.
There have never been two on the same day.

They are pepper pitted with raindrops in the sands,
and they remind me you’ve been gone for nearly three
years, off somewhere I don’t know, and I haven’t a chance
at bringing you to my side. You call me at 3AM to shout
and curse me for the simple, bloody mess I’ve made of it.
Sunshine summers are arid and the vistas are filled with illusions
by comparison. We walk together, the hot salt air carrying
our strides to a fishmonger where we happily buy salted cod
to fry for dinner on a grill we bought.  We walk like kittens
in the burning sand.  In truth, I want to be an occupied nation,
would you join me in captivity?  For all I know we’ve dreamed
this wild fantasy together, in spite of ourselves, in spite of all
the water that flooded our home: kitchens, halls, and hearts.

The mountains climbed in
through my eyes
and wormed their way
into a brain not accustomed
to such a high form of beauty.

And then there were highways
leading to plains,
their flat nothingness
pierced with the holes
of burrowing mammals.

Then there was the bayou,
crawdads we played hooky
to catch and the shrimp,
huge piles of shrimp laid out
on newspaper-covered tables.

and still I followed, running
past beaches and corn fields,
poverty and riches,
lingering always,
on the memory of mountains.

I was third, he was fourth
of six kids. Mom said he was 
her most beautiful baby.

Sandwiched between first-born 
twins and beautiful younger 
brother, I struggled

as then the only girl. 
But little brother was my friend,
ally against the united

power of twins. I helped
him learn to read, to build
Iroquois longhouses

for a school project, typed
his high school papers 
even after I left for college.

When he moved to Texas,
we still could talk, though 
we avoided certain subjects.  

Gradually, then quickly, it all 
went wrong. Three deaths,
two wills, one election

drew battle lines between us.
He unfriended, ghosted,
left us with no explanation.

I miss the round-cheeked, 
curly haired boy 
who used to be my little brother.