Elegy, Target Field
for Grandma Sally, d. 2006
You would be listening
to this crack of the bat,
that clamor of the crowd
on the tinny speakers
of your radio
though you never wanted
to go to a game—
only listen to every one.
No sunshine, no green grass
no hotdogs, no cold beer
no baseball hats, no baseball gloves.
Just this comfort:
slow arc of plays,
throaty song of the announcer,
bellow of the umpire,
promise of rules. And also
the strangeness:
Hrbek, not a big hitter,
smacking a grand slam in game six,
Puckett leaping to catch a ball
high up the left field wall,
your skinny brother Gil loping it
deep into the cornfield,
his first and only homerun.
Riley the Co-Pilot
Riley sits in front of the motorboat
skirting the border of two countries
his whiskered snout pointing
at rough water and gray sky,
our wooly hood ornament.
Beyond the point the wind picks up—
thick, dark waves slap the boat, spray inside.
Riley trembles on his seat, dips his head—
his hair is short, the wind cold,
but any animal bent on staying alive
would be more than chilled by now.
Twice now we have bounced
out of the water, a skipping rock,
our bottoms in the air for a spell,
landing on the edge of a deep trough.
I lean over Riley—he smells like dog,
his hair is coarse, but he is small
and quivering, the water so deep.
Riley Spent
Riley nudges in the screen door after dark,
drops in a heap on the floor
smelling of rank fish and some kind of dung.
He lands at the foot of my chair,
then tries to climb up beside me.
I am not his master or best friend
but I was there when the water
almost swallowed him up.
We skirted the edge of death together,
two hearts pounding against ribcage.
Kate Lucas is an MFA candidate at Hamline University. She lives in Minneapolis, MN, where she writes for a nonprofit serving impoverished communities in Guatemala. You can follow her on Twitter at @katemlucas.