Spring Training

I carry my spikes and step on the field an hour

ahead of the others. Last day of March with April

offering tickets for the new season. I'm full of sun

on wet grass, in love with blistered benches.

A sparrow sits on the backstop, watching, ready

to dart if I catch its eye. I drop my bag on home plate

and swirl my foot in the dust the way my cousin does

with his fingers on the skin of a drum head. Next year

he'll be released with the others who spent mornings

breaking windows and trashing vacation homes

like drunks in the right field bleachers. Here, I'm alone

with a sparrow and the smell of a baseball morning

settling around me like a comforter. I start trotting

to first base, the ankles loosening, then the knees,

as the dust begins to lift into the breaking light.

Around second and third I stretch my arms

in a rotary motion ready to fly. A hand waves back

from a passing car, someone who knows me

or remembers rising one morning when the game

of who you are is played out in your mind,

and around you a stadium full of fans begs you

to do what you usually do in the clutch. The bat I pull

from the bag for the first time is my father's

Louisville Slugger, thirty-three inches, wood barrel.

I thought enough time had passed, the attic dust

hard in the grooves. I stroke it slowly like a weapon

you love to touch but would never use. He hit .304

at Omaha the season he was drafted, all-star

rookie-of-the-year. He said we'd join him soon.

Then that other draft. He would have been here.

I swear he would. The silence feels oppressive now.

I dig for a scuffed ball and throw it up, shoulder high,

but let it fall. A natural hitter, my father said, holding

my hands. I grip the tar-stained handle. Tears blur

the wall that's so far away it looks warped. I aim

for marrow deep inside, April hungry for the kill.