the baseball comes for your head
in the 8th inning
as you sit in the box seats
a gift from your boss
on your 50th birthday
you spill your beer
(ten bucks a cup!!)
before slipping a hand
inside your little-league glove
and you stand up to catch
the greatest souvenir of your life
but that damn kid in front
jumps higher than you
old man
as she deflects the ball
and it cascades down
to field level
where some out-of-shape drunk
a Yankee’s fan, no less
WITH NO GLOVE!
picks it up off the beer-sticky floor
and goes home to his kids
with a story to tell
of the day he achieved
a lifelong dream
Robert Bulman is a professor at Saint Mary’s College of California, where poetry seems to hang in the air like smoke. Born in the American Midwest, he grew up in Southern California and then drifted north. He is a cautiously pessimistic emerging middle-aged poet, living and working in Northern California.