A DISTANCE CLOSE TO HOME

We called it tagging up, out of school and free.

The first to write his name behind the plate, at home,

Would be the first to hit when all the rest had come,

eager and ready.

And though every boy among us loved the game,

waking to play,

Living near the field, most often it was Freddy-

Mostly the same three: first Freddy, then Ricky or me.

On any summer’s day, you could guess,

A devoted group of six-the baseball guys-our critical mass-

With bats and gloves showed up to play. Others, drawn in

while passing by,

Now and then arrived. These we absorbed into our games

of Home Run Derby and scrub, of grounders

and flies.

Or, given sufficient numbers, we’d choose up sides,

Keeping score (though playing still for fun).

Fred was always first among the Chosen, then,

one by one,

The rest would follow in our simple draft,

In descending order of dexterity and craft.

Baseball, it turned out, was the perfect sphere

For a kid like me, set adrift on a second-hand Schwinn

in a new neighborhood-

I must have been nine that year-

Bereft already of old haunts and friends-for good of family,

It was understood-loosely fated by numerology and chance

Lucky to find myself at home with room to grow

In this new circumstance-

And, as well, being shy, to find myself on that first day

A new best friend nearby and a schoolyard sandlot

not far away.

Now, looking back some 45 years hence,

and still a boy at heart,

Despite having read the classics and dabbled in the arts,

Advanced perhaps in reason and good sense,

More than ever I find myself entranced by visions

of those high, arching flies

Launched in such profusion against the Texas sky

Toward and then beyond imagination’s fence-

Like the long trajectory of a lifetime, foreshortened,

The rise and disappearance of that boyhood friend,

his soul in flight,

Among the first of us chosen to haunt

the diamond-studded night.