A Day Remembered
Easter lingered late and long that year
in Tennessee,
while my family rested
under leaf-filled maple limbs.
The tree perched creature-like,
rooted amid some garden rocks,
and reached its tendriled arms
to scratch the sky.
Surrounding shade enshrouded us
and helped our after-dinner rest
give rise to idle jest and tales.
Words faded into silence,
crushed by locusts' buzz
and summerish hot, still,
suffocating air.
We children rushed by
with harsh and hardy shouts of:
"Let's play softball."
So despite the sun, some took the dare
and followed us to a field
left fallow on my aunt and uncle's farm.
We played in weeds and mossy mud,
running, sliding our dirty way
through April's dampened earth.
Shouts and spit mingled with cheers,
echoed among serrated, snake-like hills.
Then, a sudden surprise
snatched everybody's eyes and ears.
I hit my first-ever home run there.
All faces searched above,
showing rawest shock at such a thing.
I walked the bases slowly,
with arrogance only a boy of ten could bring,
and like a strutting rooster,
finally found my way to home.
I remember now those so beloved,
who played or lazed with me that day.
Almost all are gone.
Although I didn't know it then,
many dark farewells lay hidden ahead
to touch me each in time.
They only left fast-fading trails
like footprints lost
in far-blown snow.
Some stretched before me cold,
waxen dummies made up
with coffin-covering colors
framed by fluffy, fine-placed flowers.
Others went with only words,
among black-bordered print
on backs of news-gray papers,
where just a name remained.
Often dreaded letters
littered my dining table,
heralding in envelopes and hounding script
penned, tear-stained stories
of their passing.
Phone calls came to share,
with hushed, near-whispered words,
telling me when or where
and who was now no more.
Saddest were the ones who merely disappeared
beneath a blank horizon.
So many lives blinked out like empty suns,
setting their final days
in a gutted galaxy,
black and far beyond our ways.
Decades sprinted into dust
and silent shadows.
One morning I awoke, aching within,
to know I had no home.
Yet, even now,
I remember hitting that ball.
It sailed, careening skyward
as if above the curling, cat-like lazy clouds.
For a moment, I thought it maybe
vanished
in bright and breathless blue.
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