-There's a deep hole at Short-

       

When his son singled on a grounder

Through the hole between third and short

In the Pee-Wee League of Columbus Park

In the Summer of 1975,

Albert would have smiled broadly,

Clapping his hands with exuberant pride.

Had he lived. Had the child been born.

Had he lived,

His son would have looked his way,

Standing on the bag at first,

Uniform a full-

Size too big, helmet half-way down his face,

Eyes wide as baseballs.

Had he lived.

Had his Son been born.

Had he ducked.

Had the ball dropped an inch

To break his jaw.

Had his girl pressed closer

For another moment

Behind the Billboards

Causing him to be late for the game

Causing him to run to the Park

Spikes flung over his shoulder

Causing the Coach

To bench him for his tardiness;

For his irresponsibility

To his teammates.

In the Summer of 1958,

Albie Bernard got beaned at Ruggles Park.

But he shook it off.

He walked it off and we patted him on the ass

For being a ballplayer, for staying in the game,

Unaware of how briefly

We were spared his death by baseball.

But he died the next day in an early

Morning ambulance

Whining loud and fast down Bedford Street

Toward Union Hospital in a quest

To keep him with us, keep him with his friends,

His teammates and with his Mother.

Now his Grandmother

Wails in grief at the grave,

Standing limply, held by attendants;— 

"Albert, don't leave your Mother!"

“Albert, don’t leave your Mother!”

Now his Teammates grieve at the grave,

Silently inside themselves.

With Father Vincent Diafario assisting,
Monsignor Joseph Pannoni measured his cadence

Through the written passage of the antiphon.

Casket is sprinkled with water.

Casket is perfumed in smoke.

The silence creaks like a clearing in the woods.

More poignant are the muffled sobs and clearing

Throats at the somber grave.

There are whispers to his Mother's ear.

They shelter her palms in their hands.

We linger not knowing what to do.

Then we went to breakfast.

It’s where the ballplayers belonged,

Crowded into the Diner’s booth,

Pressed together as one body

Replaying the moment in our heads,—

The moment the ball struck Albie’s.

The baseball is pushed from the knuckler's

Fingertips and it floats to the batter hypnotically.

In the quiet booth of the Diner, Paul Pieroni’s eyes

Looked like the baseballs he pitched, floating

Like slow almond-clouds in a wind.

The stitches roll nearly without movement

When the Knuckleball floats.

It wouldn't have hit him.

It comes in too slow.

Albie's too quick.

I quietly wished a Knuckler had thrown the ball.

A Knuckleballer like Pieroni.

But someone's inshoot, high, fast and tight

Tailed-in to find its mark.

There's a deep hole at Short.  

Frankie Teixeira played Third Base

Thinking he was Frank Malzone;—

Tough and smart and slow. Great glove.

Talked the infield like a poet:

“Hum baby, hum you kid, hum baaaabe.”

Homered in a win against Saint Anthony of Padua,

The Church three blocks down the street.

But on another Planet.

Albie danced the way we danced,

Right arm wrapped around her waist,

Left hand opened for her hand,

Mouth to her cheek,— she floated on air

Like the knuckleball floats.

His young wife has the eyes of the girl;

Is cradling his son in her ams,

Kissing him goodbye in the morning.

Time for work. Time to support his family.

Had he lived.

Had his girl become his wife and had his son.

There's a deep hole in life.

On second, “Ducky” Carvalho

Once dropped a popup,

To lose a game in extra innings,

Now falling silently in the clanking Diner,

Far in the distance;

The booth closing in on us.

Teddy “Blue” Dicorpo held down First.

From Albie to Ducky to Blue.

There’s a deep hole at Short.

Albie wasn’t College material.

Not many of us were.

We heard of a kid from Holy Name

They said was invited to try-out for the Red Sox.

I played Left. Couldn't hit.

But ran fast and bunted with accuracy.

When they chanted “No batta, No batta,”

They weren’t thinking bunt.

There's a deep hole at Short.

Lionel Morrais was our Center Fielder.

Long and lanky, “Leaping Lee-Lee,”

In any Street Game played by the community of friends

Which required speed and an ability to jump,—

Peggyball, Bowl-a-Wicket, Buck-Buck,

Was mined from the pick-ups like he was gold.

Now he sat to my right in the booth

Trying like hell to talk to Pieroni.

“Albie was hit by a pipe when he was a kid,

Remember?”

This was an invention used to assuage

Our collective sorrow, as if something else,

Anything else but a baseball caused Albie’s death,

As if something else, anything else

Would make some sense.

Had there been a pipe to temper our guilt.

Paul Pieroni, Knuckleballer, will cling to it.

When Tommy Curry wasn’t playing Right Field,

He pitched in the rotation behind Paul.

He twice struck out the mighty “Chicker” Machado

In a close loss to Immaculate Conception.

I always found it strange that Tommy

Didn’t hang-out on the corner with the rest of us,

Believing that anybody who could, would.

She'd spin in her dress, bare-footed.

She'd pause when he'd pause in the warm

Embrace, goodnight sweetheart, and slip

Her foot on the hard-wood floor, pulling his foot

To follow in his lead.

There's a deep hole in life.  

John “Pappy” Tacovelli was the consumate Catcher.

Rough, hard-skinned and constantly bruised.

His Mother, Carmella, chain-smoked Camels

Which hung with a wet duck’s-ass from her mouth.

The fast-ball was favored by Gino DiNucci

As the pitch of preference to Pieroni’s

On-going consternation.

Smart, right-minded,

Uncompromising in his devotion to his team.

Like a Baseball Coach.

For the Holy Rosary baseball team of the CYO League,

There's a deep hole at Short.

In the Summer of 1958,

Albert Bernard, “Albie,”

In Fall River, by cause of a baseball,

Died after being hit in the head.

He leaves behind,—

A loving Mother,

A Brother and Sister,

His Grandmother, grief-sick.

He leaves his Teammates.

He leaves behind,—

The girl of his arms,

His wife and their child,—

Had that he lived.

There's a deep hole in life.

He leaves behind,—

A glove, olive-

Oiled, hand-rubbed and ready,

Threaded through the handlebars.

He leaves behind,—

This singular romance of him:

Bernard, Albert, “Albie.”

In Fall River. All Star.

Shortstop.

Bats right.

Throws right.

Quequechan

             

  

-The maple tree at ruggles park-

Saturday afternoon at Ruggles Park

And my Parish baseball team
Of the old Fall River CYO league 

Is engaged in an extra-inning struggle

With its principal rival.

Holy Rosary 8

Immaculate Conception 8

Inning 12.

I was a good left fielder, left-handed
And hit a low average.
Maybe .230 or so.

But I could run fast and that made me
Holy Rosary’s designated bunter.

The situation of the game was irrelevant.

When I came to the plate, my Coach would

Flash me one of only two signs.

The “Take” or the “Bunt.” That’s it.

This Saturday afternoon found me at the plate

With one out and a man on second.

A base hit will win the game.

Gino gives me the Take sign. Strike one.

Gino gives me the Take sign. Strike two.

Gino gives me the Take sign.

This is the universe as I knew it.

One on, one out, no balls and two strikes

In a tie game and Gino gives me the Take sign.

The "Imac's" pitcher, who they called “Rigger”

Was firing strikes past my chest with an adroitness

Usually reserved for the assassin with a scoped 30-06.
No balls, two strikes.

The Catcher trots to the mound to chat with “Rigger.”

I know what he’s saying:

“Rig,” Let’s dump this little prick. Fastball by the head.

The Ump’ll call “Three” to speed-up the game.

Then we’ll deal with Tacovelli.”

“Strike Three” call. 
Said unemotionally,
Without the typically exaggerated intonation
The "Steeeeraaaahhhhk" three call the Umps
Seem to glory in. No tortured torso twist, 
Or arm-punching animation.
No pomp, no ceremony. Just cold arithmetic
Like he's saying: "Sorry kid."


Two outs. 

I stand at the plate with the bat

Above my shoulder in the quiet
Circular motion of its head,

Knees bent slightly, legs in my favored 

Close-stance position, frozen that way,

Like posing for somebody's clay relief,
As Tacovelli walked
Deliberately in his spikes, 

Closing-in on the plate where I'm frozen like a Popsicle,
The game moving on without my assistance.

Ruggles Park was an open field. No fence. Just grass and trees.

People walked through the park's inviting atmosphere 
Just beyond the outfielders positions,
Reminiscent of baseball's early days with cows and bulls 
Roaming around freely, careless of the count.

Beyond Right field, across the street stood Ruggles School,

A school for the wayward. A school of threat.
The school of the Sword of Domiciles. 

“Keep it up and you’ll be heading to Ruggles, young man.”

Beyond Left Field rising from a slow hill, stood the three- 
Story tenement houses, active in the summer;
The yards, the porches and the street below.

Beyond Center Field lay a long stretch of grass
And to the left in the distance, from the batter's
Line-of-sight stood an ancient, fat-trunked, maple

And I’m at the plate with the bat in my hands as useless

As yesterday's strike-out. And then..

At the base of the maple,

A young man has pinned his sweetheart

To the wood, to the bark of the tree.
I can see this clearly and I seem to be the only
Player who notices.
The game was moving on in its beauty 
Without me. 
But the new outer movement

Becomes this guy and his girl moving together,
Pressed to the tree, 
Pressed in a leaning dance,

A slow, slow circle in the motion of hips,

Tilts of their heads, up and around, 

Sweat of his hair sweats to her hair,

The milk of her arms loosely dropped at her dress

Like spilled porcelain, a flutter of wind,

The universe they've made for themselves 
Spinning around them, around the great maple,

And me at the foot of my dusty plate,
With the scars of three strikes coating my throat

And young love’s hot performance 
Playing out in the distance,

Tacovelli moving in, swinging two bats,
Letting one fly behind him, holding the one, the one
Knocking the clots of dirt from his battered cleats,
The look of determination etched in his eyes
And me, walking slowly toward the dugout, glancing to center
And the guy and his girl at the trunk of the maple
Burning a love letter into its wood.

Immaculate Conception 9

Holy Rosary 8

In 13.

                                  Quequechan

-wonder of the world-

sitting in the stands

as baseball is played

in the rough of the game

not a pro in the park

dugouts are benches

loosely loud and nearly tobacco- 

spit free

and baseball moves without money

so the beauty can be seen.

the stands are active

without regular order

like the living-room

after an august supper

where the kids

jockey for position in front
of the television

keeping the elders off balance

from the time when bed

will be announced.

as the sun is setting

in the top of the eighth

in a small park where baseball is played,

sounds in the atmosphere range

from the living stands

and from the mouth of the game

from a wonder of the world.


                              Cooperstown, New York

                 

                    

-first floor at 1017-

The foreground:

Wallpaper, oilcloth and the kitchen sink.

Don’t count the houseflies. Their numbers
Change by the hour.

The background:

Runs through the screen door to the yard
Between two houses.
Outside

The evergreen hedge pushes its stiff
Fingers through the chain-

Link fence.
The grapevine built
By my grandfather before my birth,
Tended by him through the seasons,
Scaffold anchored into a slab
Of cement where wooden
Chairs sat in the leafy shade.
Count
The sparrows,
The remnant of a vegetable garden;
Tomatos, zucchini, pepers, and over there,
Potatoes. 

The street leads to 

The Park then the Church
And beyond it a stand of trees and then
The forbidden granite quarry’s ledge.
The street:

Rolled-out and flattened in front of the house,

The house:
Heavy and indestructible.— Inside,
The women wipe with damp sponges,
A high-pitched swish over the oilcloths
Releasing the pungent scent of petroleum.
The men take off the necessary fedoras

By the fingertips of their hands
At the crease of their crowns at the end
Of their day.

The television:
Jingle's a friendly gasoline delivery system.

                                                       Quequechan

an abstract expression to the young lady sitting in front of me

on the Bedford and County bus

– pardon me, but I glanced over your shoulder at your notations

especially the saturated one about snail-slimed cabbages! 

such love so many will never come to know but you dear lady,

you stick around 'till the rickety old bus stops one block

before the steps to your house.

– you know, it's too bad poetry makes us suspicious about people

who refuse to ride the bus. what a glorious shame!

so you’ll ride around with me again in our special way?  — that's good.

I'm an impatient man, but as the youngsters say: tomorrow waits for everyone.

 – away from home I'll leave Pablo to his partridges, Emily to her fig tree

and Ferlinghetti to his city, panting heavily beneath its bridge.

you'd think he's masturbating, and so he may well be.––such love!

 – you know, I'd like to slip last night's poem to you passing it over

your shoulder on our next ride together knowing you may not appreciate

the somber way I often misuse dashes and over-hyphenate but then

like a magician's puff of smoke we'll disappear beyond the steps to your house

and others will take our seats and who knows if they will be as rewarding

for them as they have been for us. 

                   

-important things-

The Coonskin hat

was sucked from my head in a stiff breeze

over the schoolyard

floating ridiculously tail over tail
into the woods beyond the fence 

and we weren’t allowed to go in the woods.
Maybe it was going where it belonged.

I was young enough to cry but I didn’t

knowing the hat was not on my father’s

list of top five things not to lose.

Any amount of money was the first.

Anything belonging to my sister was next.

My report card was third.

One of my sneakers was the fourth, and anything

brought to "show-and-tell" from the bathroom was fifth.

The coonskin was back there with the school picture

of Natalie Fonseca smiling with a missing tooth.

Now you’ve got your political candidates.

You’ve got the toilet that won’t shut-up.

You’ve got the suit with the dot of a stain

near the zipper of the slacks you try to hide

by foolishly buttoning the jacket from the bottom.

I’ll add death here only because my parakeet
left its cage and flew outside, across the backyard,
over Healy Street, and into Rachlin's Junkyard
never to be recovered three days after the Davy
Crocket Coonskin hat took flight.






                                                 Quequechan