Paper Pennants

 When I was a young child

my brothers had a hockey game

with metal men

and a marble.

Each team had

a paper pennant

like a challenge laid boldly

before the other teams and the larger world.

I liked the Toronto Maple Leafs

in their sweaters as blue as God's eyes.

The goalie's smile never faltered

though he was hit with the marble a thousand times.

In a dream

I see that goalie coming up the tunnel

in his blue sweater and big brown pads

fearless, changeless, continuously happy.

He takes to the ice

to tend his green mesh net

while we stare up from beneath the surface

like ads or circles or lines or dots.

When I was a young child

there were Red Wings and Rangers

Blackhawks and Bruins

a marble, a goalie, and tilted ice that seemed perfectly fair at the time.

_____

Word Garden Word List--Game Six

 

Hello my little spring chickens, and welcome to another Word Garden Word List poetry prompt! If you know me, you know that I have been a seamhead since I was 6 years old, and with this week being the opening of a new baseball season, I have chosen an excellent book as our source this time: Mark Frost's Game Six.

The Mick. He had retired by the time of game six.

Game Six is an immensely entertaining and readable account of game six of the classic 1975 World Series. It delves into the personalities of the players, what made game six so memorable, and is packed with interesting information I didn't know before. 

Some of you don't care about the sportsing!

I know that not all of you care about baseball, but it doesn't matter! Just use 3 or more of the 20 words provided in a new, original poem of your own. Then simply link up, visit others, and then sit back in the sun with a dog and a Coke and enjoy yourself! This prompt remains active through next Saturday. 

And now, your List:

children

curiously

doggone

fabled

few

gimpy

job

kicked

leather

master

plant

poster

promise

rain

school

scrap

souls

spotlight

story

tradition

Seaside Fable

 A memory came to me, riding in a wagon

pulled by a baboon. Sick and white-faced,

this memory asked for a glass of vinegar

and told me in Spanish that the baboon was a doctor.

"She can cure you," the memory assured me 

in a terrible cross-saw voice. "I'm not sick," I

insisted, but the memory barked, balancing

a world on its nose like a seal and said, "You are dead already."

This world spun on a wash of wine, yellow and sour,

and was no world of mine. "Listen, horrid seaside ghost,

ashes can never be castles again, and you don't exist."

That's when the sick, dying, putrescent memory-thing

bit me in the heart, and laughing, threw back its head as if hanged.

There was nothing the baboon doctor could do,

and seeing this, she hocked my memory and gave

me the ticket, saying, "Swap me your forgiveness,"

but I injected her with roaring fury and beat her to death 

with my empty heart.

__________

for Word Garden Word List--Giovanni's Room

Music: Men At Work Down By The Sea

Mount Pleasant

 "But in the grey of the morning 

my mind becomes confused

between the dead and the sleeping

and the road that I must choose"

The Moody Blues Question 

I remember a secret place behind new house construction

still untouched, with a little brook; I knew the hidden entry.

It was September, yellow leaves nattering on thick birches

with impossible blue sky behind. My solitary sanctuary.

I've not been back but know

that a sub and casino took its place.

SUVs, neon signs, leaf blowers,

but in my mind it's still my private place. 

My wandering discoveries now unfold in recurring dreams

of curious, fey, deserted neighborhoods found just beyond a rise.

The streets are new, but the homes deserted and crumbling

with just a face here or there behind a curtain, calmly waiting to die.

In these latter years, one seems

as real and compelling as the other.

I once saw a pheasant burst from a bush

and a grackle's lost feather flutter.

___________

for Word Garden Word List--Autumn. 

Music: Frank Sinatra The September of My Years

Santa Anita

 

When I think of you 

                                     Daddy,

still to this day I see you in

                                               overcoat and fedora,

newspaper under your arm,

                                                  breath visible in the cold,

coming down the sidewalk from the

                                                                 train station--

I would run to meet you, overjoyed.

Years later,

                    post-divorce, me a

21-year-old 

                     home from overseas.

I stayed with you

                              and your new wife

that stranger, and you Daddy, 

                                                    you a stranger too

in the unfamiliar sprawl of L.A.

You took me with you to

                                           Santa Anita racetrack

with the beautiful thoroughbreds

                                                            ambling

in their easy gait, the jockeys

                                                    leaning forward

as if already running the next race.

                                                              I was looking

at the odds board and then you were gone.

I waited as the horses with their

                                                         strange wonderful names

finished race after race,

                                           feeling lost, and sad, then angry.

I still regret how I spoke to you

                                                       when you finally appeared

but you took it all with a funny smile. 

                                                                  Years later I realized

that you had gone to call the new wife.

                                                                      You just

couldn't be away from her, for me. 

Daddy, I don't know who you turned into.

My adored father

                               became someone who lived

with plastic over the furniture

                                                     and the Lakers on tv.

Oh for a ballgame with you

                                                 at Tiger Stadium

or another trip to the DIA

                                             to see Diego Rivera's mural.

I would run to you, overjoyed,

                                                     but you are gone,

just a sad California memory.

__________________________

for Dverse Poetics "Left In The Lurch" hosted by my friend Dora. 

Music: The Pretenders Back on the Chain Gang

Dear Girl

the bowls are stored away--
i couldn't bear to see them empty.

your leash turned up in my purse today
at work and made me cry.

i gave your extra chews and treats--so many of them--
to your adored big human brother, for his babies.

i have cleaned up the blood from your illness
from my floors because seeing it made me question God.

but your toys are still everywhere--your donkey, your raccoon, your lamb--
to remind me of joy; that exotic thing as common as kibble to you, dear girl.
______

for the sunday mini-challenge.