FOR
THE LOST BOYS (sample
selections)
The Anthropology of Little League Baseball
Black Pattern on a Mocha Ground
Sky
Dun Aengus
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL
The styles of neophyte umpires alone merit
A monograph from a small distinguished press,
This one’s elaborate Kung-Fu-inflected step
Twist, plunge, and recoil—“YROUT!”—
With the sound of wind punched out of bagpipes, or
The stately, vulnerable posturing of last week’s ump
As he dropped from the waist to sweep home plate
With the same six precisely parallel brusque strokes.
A field-seasoned prof with a team of grad interns
Might well forego that sub-Saharan nomadic tribe
To lurk these stands, scribbling notes, convening
Each evening over the beverage favored by locals
To discuss the genres and signatures of spitting
Among rural American ten-year-old boys—girls
Now too—back pockets bulging with pouches
Of shredded pink bubblegum “chew.” They might devise
A special calligraphy to note the choreography
Of sliding, the balletics of snag and tag, and especially
The beautiful contortions of pitchers’ windups: the little
Prayer over the ball, the shock-corded limbs
Arcanely folded, unsprung with unlikely grace.
One intern adept in confessional interviews,
Practiced in native dialect and vernacular, will sit
Among the parents, the grandparents, the step-parents,
And ask, “So, which one’s yours?”, which, he knows,
Will unfold stories of fathers, the early victories
That ease the world’s disregard, the healing rites
Of eternal seasonal return, the allegiance we pledge
To sportsmanship, as long as we’re winning, team spirit
Plus the free-agent slinging greased-lightning sliders.
One whimsical ethnographer may linger
In stands emptied of all but wrappers and cups
And witness the invisible cloud that hovers
Above the arc-lit diamond, the collective
Night-cherished fantasy of playing in the Majors,
Which only a few seasons can sustain.
BLACK PATTERN ON A MOCHA GROUND
If not “quick as a snake,” then quick enough
I bring the brick’s end down
On his head in one tamping motion. But that
Cliché is wrong: snakes take life
Slowly, depending more on camouflage,
The failed perception of others, than speed.
Bud, a big black man whose bad heart
Sent bolts down his arm, told me
The thing scared him most in Nam
Wasn’t “gooks or bombs” but a cobra,
Hood flared, reared belt-high,
Parting a column of soldiers on a dusty road
Faster than a man could run. Bud
Lashed the air with his arm to show me,
The arm that later that summer,
Laying bricks, struck his heart.
There is a distinction between aggression
And self-defense we fail to grant
To snakes. Lost on Bud, it was not
Lost on the Vietcong. A summer before,
The war raging beyond the edges of my
Perception, I hiked Chilhowie Mountain,
Stopping to eat a half-pack of Fig Newtons
In the unmanned fire tower on top.
In all directions, the green canopy,
Beneath which, hiking down, I caught
An ancient black snake and fed him
Into the sleeve of my shirt. I tell you,
All the clichés are wrong.
Smooth and dry as talcum,
He wound around my heart three times,
And, further down the slope, lent me
Nerve to trap an arm-thick rattler
With a forked stick, slide my hand
Up behind the flanges of its skull, and carry it—
Mouth sprung—to the nature center’s terrarium.
I am not a snake, nor am I a Vietcong.
Even so, neither can I understand
The failed perception by which
My neighbor, or his teenage son,
Swerved to hit or did not swerve
To miss the snake crossing our road.
His perfect tube is ruptured: a yellow
Loop of intestine hangs out,
A staggered pattern of obsidian chips
Floats the mocha ripples on his back,
And I, coils around my heart,
I waited till dawn, then came to wake you up
expecting you’d be burrowed
in the sheets,
but when I eased the door ajar I glimpsed
you sitting up, propped on one arm,
your head
inclined a little to the side, as if
the weight of dreams might pull you down
again.
Then I saw your gaze had carried you out
among the shadow-nested branches. . .
.
Your age, I sat beside the road and waited,
watching rain come. I’d never
seen the sky
as something wholly separate from me,
and then I did. The clouds were gray and
fierce
and low against the mountain, raked by branches.
Beneath the whipping elm,
I wanted them
to touch me, but then, as the first drops fell,
my father came from work and carried
me in.
Until today, I’ve thought it was for him
I waited, he who’d come
to carry me.
Gray light is sifting through the trees you know.
I close the door and leave you
to the sky.
Dun Aengus demands invaders and pilgrims
approach through outer rings, work
in.
First is the sea ringing Inish Mór,
the thin, leeward band of North Atlantic
we ferried across, chewing knuckles
of ginger-root to keep our stomachs.
Some of us stood the upper deck,
legs braced, foul-weather suited,
astonished each time the bow’s plunge
sent a shotgun blast of spray
into our faces, less brave by half
than those dry as dice in a box below.
Another’s the ring of velvet-grassed paddocks,
the rumpled island scalped
of trees
by millennia of smoked mutton, rafters
blacked by twig fires, until nothing’s
left
but peat and the gnarled blackthorns,
shriven harps bent by unceasing westerlies.
And, too, the walls’ crazed patterns,
less to keep in the sheep than
to clear space
to graze, leave droppings, make soil
for grass to surge once more, tenuous
purchase surviving makes on the future.
And to make the one surplus a blessing.
Then comes the ring of razored stones,
jagged headstones planted askew
with no room for the dying to lie down.
Here the zealous or inscripted waves
of Picts, Romans, Vikings, Saxons,
and Normans broke, foaming in their blood.
We, like them, marched up the bare mountain,
shale-backed and purplish against
blue sky,
but heard no hoarse command to dash
our shins on stones offering no cover
and set in arrow range. But then,
we came as pilgrims on rented bikes
wobbling down hedge-banked lanes,
stopping at the one wayside hostel
to lunch on barley soup and salmon,
grateful to be four thousand years late.
And so weaved the razored stones
quietly, bowed through doors slotted
in the outer walls (concentric, man-tall,
leveled ground between for fighting),
and came finally to the broken crown
of Dun Aengus. Only then, having been
allowed entry, having passed through
into the central tumbler of the colossal
lock
that hangs on the west-most door of Ireland,
did we see the wall’s sweep
round cut off
by sky where the cliff-face sheers to the sea.
Only then did we know this a cup
to catch the sun’s evening sacrament.
Strangers come to a shared intimacy
and nearly stripped of the need for it,
we dropped our knapsacks and cameras
to form
the inner ring that then we knew
we’d come there to join. But only after
crawling to hang our heads over
the edge
and fill the wind-socks of our bodies.
Wind honed on a whole, slatey ocean
met the blunt edge of a continent
and rushed upward to widen rubbery faces.
Only bellies pressed to rock
convinced that we were not falling, though
the very stone beneath us hummed.
Waves came with the ease of liquid
rocked in a bowl, climbed the storied
ledges toward us, and bloomed in slow,
feathering explosions, collapsing back
only to detonate again against
incoming crests, curdling the ocean.
Gannets teetered on the wind’s edge.
Puffins shot in and out of crags.
A cadmium lichen scaled the rocks.
We grew smaller than any of these,
lined along the edge, bodies already
emptied, waiting to be blessed into the sea.