Opening Day

A Baseball Poem...

“My favorite urban flower, the baseball box score.”

― Roger Angell, The Summer Game

OPENING DAY

We would duck out of school early.
Catch the 7 Line at Queensborough, slipping
past truancy and under turnstiles,
the sea of orange and blue pulling us
in like a riptide, the train car packed,
shoulder to shoulder in pinstripe whites, 60’s
blue and the classic black of our heartbroken youth.
On the mad dash to Willets Point 
we recounted the years lost, the years we almost won—
the greats, the fakes, Piazza at the plate.
“This isn’t ’86.” “But it could be”, I said.
Thirty years later, I tell my son the same,
but he’s too busy sleeping, snoring in his bed.