In Your Honor

I went to the bar

expecting your arrival.

We placed our bets,

watched the clock,

and you didn't show.

We had a few beers

anyway.  I saw some

people I sort of knew,

created small conversations

out of memory, history,

and nonsense,

just like you and I

would have done.

The moment when conversation crosses the fine line between weather and injustice.

It'll be mostly sunny, humid and 95

the next few days, I told him, like Florida

without the legalized lynching.

Forward

I push the mower ever forward

on parallel lines.  There is 

a sense of order in this task

that is lacking at times elsewhere.

Forward as the breeze carries

with it songs of goldfinches and

freight trains, the smells

of honeysuckle and angry dog.

There's a bumper crop of tomatoes

this year, and a low spot

still flooded in mid-July.  I push

forward thinking of these things,

or in better moments thinking

nothing at all, only a subconscious

recognition of parallel lines,

the smell of fresh cut grass,

a natural order, ever forward.

Baseball Secrets

On the radio

there is a terrible,

suspenseful pause
 

between game sounds
and the announcer's call, like

thud of glove or crack of bat
 

so it becomes

interminable, a forever,
as if there is a secret

lost somewhere

between strikes 2 and 3
before it hits my antennae.