Was a long day even for a day game 
at Brookville Park, where all the swamps 
of southeast Queens seemed finally to convene. 
It was 13 to 4 with two long innings left 
or, with luck, the big kids 
would take over the field
even before our game reached its end.
If I got to bat, it didn’t matter much to anyone--
I would strike out or walk,
always attentive to the manager, Mr. Muzio’s counsel:
Crouch down and don’t ever swing.
This usually worked.
I’d end up standing on first,
or just as well in the dugout alone
behind the half fence
where the weeds grew high as my knees. 
Awkward for his age, the coach whispered to my pop,
and, then, banished to deep right 
where the ball was seldom hit
and I could daydream the rest of this torment away--
the batted ball rolling past me,
my teammates—we were in this together—
hollering top of their lungs:
Walowitz, Dogface! Go fetch the ball. Run.
                        

Wisdom alone--and our higher self--ought to say
these days are handed to us, 
not quite for free, but almost gifts, 
and we ought to be, unto them, like worker-bees
charged only with avoiding the mediocrity 
of sub-standard honey--under-pollinated and worse, 
too much delay in what ought to be its joyful making.
What a waste, hours spent thinking: 
just another swamp in this, the daily grind,
the sameness, the futility, the muck up to our knees.
And isn’t it time for tea, or better yet, Happy Hour,
so, we might get lost in the empty space
of the dusk or whatever we name the darkness
that seems, like the plague, bound to swallow us?