take a pitch

He needs to take this pitch, the radio says

I shut the car off before finding out if he did.

By the time I’ve finished grocery shopping and returned to the car the game is over

No comeback in the 9^th

I’m barely paying attention anyway.

I would do well to take a few pitches.

I turn the postgame off and try not to think about whether next week’s groceries will require a dip

                into savings.

It’s only 3:30 in the afternoon.

Beneath the Kindle I discover an Easter card that my in-laws

                gave me last spring.

My in-laws gave me an Easter card.

That’s the kind of people they are.

The card is full of puns

The world could use more people like my in-laws

I should throw the card away or store it somewhere

But I leave it on the end table beneath the Kindle

It’s found a home there and

There is enough rootlessness as it is.

My hand shook this morning but it’s steady now

I had two cups of coffee early like I do every day

Maybe it’s not good for me

But I do it anyway

Gear up for the known

Still the shaking concerned me

I imagined arthritis and dementia, aneurysms and heart attacks

I told myself I’m 42 and in decent health

Take a pitch, that’s what I should do

Look for the curve, look for the change.

I had an out-of-body experience on my 18^th birthday

Brought on by LSD

I looked at my rag doll body slumped by the toilet

There was a pile of housekeeping magazines on the floor

My arm draped over them

Like I was hugging them

I was deeply unimpressed with myself

I thought about Naked Lunch which I was reading at the time

I wanted cosmic spies and talking assholes

Not my silent body hugging housekeeping magazines

I realized I could die and even though I was out of my body I still had no idea

                what death meant

After a while I figured I’d better get back into my body

Didn’t want to die and leave my fellow partygoers with a problem

Didn’t want to die hugging housekeeping magazines next to a toilet

I was most of the way back in my body when D. came in and asked me where I’d been

I moved my lips and my limbs

Thought of the Stephen King story “The Raft”

                how the colors hypnotized the kids

                just before they were eaten

I told D. I was admiring the colors

It was a stupid hippie thing to say

There was no way I could take a pitch then

There was so much infield to explore

So much outfield to traverse.

Fear tastes like tangerines.

I don’t much care for fruit

I eat too much salt

Salt leads to aneurysms

Salt leads to excessive exit velocity.

Harry S. Truman was not a folk hero

He was a stubborn idiot who thought

The mountain would never harm him

That belief got him buried in tons of hot ash and mud

His lake ejected into the air

When the lake landed it was choked with dead timber and poisonous gasses

There’s nothing noble about becoming a myth

There’s nothing romantic about ignorance

Reid Blackburn and David Johnson died in the line of duty

Their deaths were no less painful but they weren’t ignorant

Their work gave something to the world

Harry S. Truman was a hook for sensationalistic TV pieces

I felt bad for his cats, though.

Take a pitch.

Every seven years or so I spend 3-8 months in a state of anxiety

A continuing panic attack

Convinced my heart is about to stop beating even though it’s beating too fast

Convinced I’ll forget how to breathe

My chest tightens and hurts

I think I’m getting dementia

Sure that I will soon be unable to string words together

My daughters will look at me

Their eyes sad and scared

What happened to our father?

They’ll think to our earlier discussions about how the body is just

                a wagon of meat

And they’ll realize it’s true

This blubbering idiot in front of them

This empty meat bag

Was once their father

Is still their father

But he seemed fine, they’ll say

He was laughing and joking and singing Def Leppard songs with us

Until he wasn’t

What is mom going to do now?

This is selfish this is unfair this is a mistake

Where’s our father, where did he go?

Curveball.

Change.

Heater.

How naked we are in front of love.

The bones in my hand hum to think of it

I want go to Jupiter

Naked, pleading, desperate

Take a pitch, take a pitch.

I’m going to name it even if it’s just out of the frame

I’m going to name it even if I never sleep again

I’m going to name it and change the pillowcases

Burnt toast smells like childhood

Char on the teeth and tongue

In future years the char will get rave reviews

                in the foodie publications and websites

But for now it is just grit in the mouth

Scraping and wonder, longing and butter

Take a pitch, spitball, butterball

A mouth full of spiders

A handful of dried leaves

Crackling as they are crunched in a fist

Seasons circle back and eat their own tail

I still love autumn

Even when everything hurts

Even when everything is breaking

The playoffs start in October and it is

                even more important to take a pitch

If I can just steady my hands

Erase the swirling in my eyes

If I can just take a pitch

Then I have a chance

To stay in the lineup.