Post Season Play

                  “I’m dying more than we all are,”

                  he said, chuckling over thoughts

                  of his old ball glove hanging like a tired leather moon 

                  in a museum somewhere.

                            Bottom of the 8^th, two outs, sponsored

                            by Ponder's Buick. Pitch is low.

                            Swing and a miss. Strike two.

                  “It won’t go easy now,” he breathed. “It

                   never will.”

                   During game breaks he watched the lawn crew 

                   work against the nodding wind,

                   power blowers strapped to their young backs,

                   time and leaves blown into large gusty piles 

                   with autumn gilt like rust,
                   the color of sun at dusk. 

                   

                   He sang “Blue Christmas” with the commercial
                   now stuck inside his old white head. 

                   He summoned his pickled Elvis voice,

                   the one he used for summer field amusement.

                   His mind gyrated ankles instead of hips,

                   a gag he devised for his wife when his

                   mangled knee was racked high on a chair, his

                   leg propped up to keep the swelling down.

                   A thousand merry chickadees swooped in
                   like nurses or monks or maybe
                   a hundred, or maybe twenty two.

                   They took to the window ledge like family, 

                   to the wide green lawn, the flower garden,
                   the main road home.

                 
                   When workers and crowds of leaves had gone,

                   the chickadees beat their tiny wings with rapid fire applause

                   full of tiny beaks and black eyes
                   masked like comedic bandits 

                   looking for a crack in the glass.

                 
                   He reached out to take them in,
                   to touch them through the window

                   to see if they might sing.
                   

                   “It won’t go easy now,” he told them.

                   “It never will.” They didn't hear him

                   in his tiny bed, nor the curtains, nor the silent

                   radio. He was elsewhere and warm
                   when the Pennant was finally decided, the season lost 

                   and won, the birds already gone.
                 

                             Elegy for Roscoe Simon

                             How strange

                             the search for loss

                             again, or more

                             than this.

                             - - - 

                           
                             How many times

                             he scraped against this

                             hungry cupboard door

                             so well rehearsed,

                             so now well fed.

                             Old squirrels dig their holes unhindered

                             in the yard. Wild geese

                             slide across the breeze like

                             clusters of sideways leaves

                             scrolling hard ground 

                             for the dead.

                             Cold blankets

                             are tucked in place.

                             Maple leaves fall

                             more golden than before. Ripe

                             apples turn more than red.

                             What thief 

                             would come so randomly

                             to sniff these empty chairs,

                             a myriad of playful things

                             abandoned in their corners;

                             who would spook a flock of
                             thundering tiny sparrows

                             from their yews outside

                             his old living window?

  

                             Silence

                             rubs its desirous fur

                             against my autumn legs

                             for a scratch

                             on its needy head of wind,

                             its gust of whiskers and twigs
                             its patter of chronic malcontent.

                             Finger strokes of clouds

                             curl and curl for a nap like feathers
                             on the tops of soft upholstered air.

                             A second hand clicks,

                             a pall of wind bemoans the window,

                             an old tree bares its branches.

                           
                             The room, now empty,

                             yawns itself to sleep,

                             the fresh white sleep
                             of solitude and long dreams.