-across the street from the ESSO station-

my old house is dressed in vinyl.

It was dressed in aluminum before that

after it was dressed in wood.

It’s during the age of wood where I showed up.

now when I drive by on my way over the river,

across the big bridge which

wasn’t there during the time of wood,

when gasoline wasn’t sissified by the extraction
of its lead and doctors

smoked cigarettes during the examinations,

I see lots of vinyl.— pea green. sky blue.

even sunlight can’t help it.

here, the entries have entrances,—

little structures of their own leading to them.

God’s been vaporized

and I mean that in the good sense.

I didn’t think of God as vapor, in the time of wood.

backstops have been moved further from the plate,—

in my case, further toward Wall Street

beyond the third base line where a friend
lived with his family.

he was a good shortstop, a mariner later in life
and later still, dead of a fat-constricted heart.

four or five mills have burned to the ground

and four churches, too.

as I've told you, during the age of wood,
at the bubbler beyond the backstop, the water was a clear fall.

and I've said: one could see through the water to the other side

where the game would play-out— 

and I've imagined

it might have been the way baseball would be seen when played on another planet.

and that imagery could never be experienced in the age of vinyl.