IOWA CITY, 1962


Donald Justice playing
softball, dark shades
cloaking his courtliness
like a bandit’s mask on an

owl, but he’ll not be
courtly for long
anyway: a call goes
against him, and his cheeks flame,

his arm goes up in a
pumping protest
against the vagaries
of wind, spin, fingertips’ torque – 

the only subtleties
to elude him?
I so wanted to be
like him then, perhaps even

up to and including
that innocence,
that wild softball passion,
that one hapless assurance.





LAST KNOWN RESIDENCE


Authorities
have yet to determine
his last known residence.

His clothes were worn, but
not threadbare. Clean,
but they'd been slept in.

Near his hand was a book
by Philip Levine,
What Work Is.

He was almost touching it,
as if he'd wanted
to read it one more time.​