Jogging with John

I thought about John Keats today

and about St. Agnes’ Eve,

how bitter chill it was.

Down here in the swampland

there is no chill,

and as I ran this morn

sweat pumped from every pore.

I thought about the owl,

a’cold, for all his feathers.

If I had feathers

I’d choose to have them on my feet.

I’d fly along th’ heat-shimmered street

like wingéd Hermes

on a mission from the gods,

dropping off a billet doux

from Aphrodite to her husband,

lame Hephaestus, at work below

at th’ eternal forge.

The heat that blasts his seaméd face

is of the dry variety

and would seem a quaint relief to me.

When I reached home at last,

Keats met me at the door

(only one of us was real;

take your pick).

We took our seats on my front porch bench

each in his hand a beaded glass

filled with ice and lemonade,

and I managed not to smack him

when he toasted me with his and said,

“Hot enough for you, Bill?”

This morning

This morning I jogged down College Street

in the thick shade cast by twelve tall trees

and I remembered running along that same street

when there was no shade

because there were no trees.

Warm up

the Geezer Bus.

Shoved aside by the wind’s huge hand

I tumbled toward the roadside ditch

landed on my shoulder

and rolled like an action-movie hero

though I didn’t spring to my feet

and hose a villain with an Uzi.

Instead I lay on my back

and hoped that the passersby

would think I was studying cloud formations

and not some old fool who’d fallen

while he was running

when he should have been at home in his underwear

sitting on the couch

reading the Geezer News.

Little League Try-Outs, January 22, 2011

Twenty-nine degrees.

Clink of aluminum bat.

The ball bounces once

on the infield dirt.

The shortstop misses,

and the ball

skims across the silver-frosted outfield grass.

The sun is barely above the horizon.

The players cast long shadows,

taller than the men they one day

will become.

Shadows longer even

than the boys’ dreams:

the homer that wins

the seventh Series game,

the picture on the baseball card,

enshrinement in the Hall.

When the boys leave the Little League

will they play on?

Or will they become accountants,

teachers, soldiers, saints?

One of them might even be

like me,

a solitary runner in the dawn.