It is like shaking hands with a bag of oyster crackers;
Joints sprained, ligaments torn, fingers fractured
And splayed off in several different directions
Like a weathervane that has had a rather nasty shock, indeed,
The whorls of his fingertips, the uneven rise and fall of the knuckles
Serving as a travelogue of a lifetime spent
In towns not quite ready for the big time:
Olean, Oneonta, Visalia, Valdosta, a dozen more besides,
A million miles on buses
Of uncertain vintage and roadworthiness.
Each scar and swelling, each uneven path
Between base and fingertip has a tale of its own;
The ring finger on the left hand first broken
By a Big Bob Veale fastball that was supposed to be a curve,
Later snapped again by Steve Dalkowski,
Who, drinking quite a bit by then
(When ol’ Steve had put away a few, he notes ruefully,
You didn’t want to hit him, catch him,
Or sit in the first few rows behind the plate)
Most likely never saw the sign
Indicating slider instead of high heat.
The index finger on his throwing hand?  
Well, that was from a foul tip in…Wellsville in ’59?  Walla Walla in ’62?
When you’ve bit up by the ball as many times as I have,
You tend to forget what you tore up when.
Ah, but no such problem with the right pinkie;
That was snapped one cold April night
Somewhere between Winnipeg and Duluth,
During a poker game when a backup infielder
Produced an unexpected and wholly inexplicable king
Seemingly from nowhere.

But those hands!  They were, in the lexicon of the scouts
(The same ones who labeled him
With the dreaded tag of “good field, no hit”)
Who trolled the sandlot parks
And high school fields of his childhood, “soft”;
Indeed, he could cradle a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball like an infant,
And, with the gentlest and most imperceptible of movements,
Turn the wildness of a nineteen-year-old phenom
Into an inning-ending third strike, and even now,
Two decades of bad lighting and jury-rigged equipment
Having turned the topography of his digits craggy and asymmetrical,
They seem as smooth and supple as they were at nineteen,
With all the strength and unsullied smoothness of youth,
As he grips and waggles an unseen bat
In the course of retelling
(In his one brief, glorious spring in camp with the big club)
How he doubled to the gap in right-center
Off none other than the great Whitey Ford himself.

let's cry together shy
for all the souls who are
gonna die
not knowing
the beauty of the forest glen
the fair shine of an evening sun
the smoke of fire
the mountains shoulder
the sea's vapor or
a young deer wild
loose upon the prairie
a goat baying
a horse gallop between their thighs
a river cold wash
their cares
away
the lover's paradise
that joy of a child that comes
when they look at you like god hisself
a new day unfolding
where dread or misdeed
gets put away in bright yellow
praise for
this is just another day
dead have seen as much
poets have felt
stroked
the felt of that fur
called forth to the God's the Earth's majesty
so much better
yet
it is until
I die when
I will shut up
and quit trying
to capture
this life
as well
as enjoy
it
in the meantime
let us
cry together

~
The swelling brooks, so clear toned,
Rolling rounds over musical stones,

That unveil the rushed veins of May,
Race in wide cool stills, freshnesses,

Of the moistened soils overturning
And the chimes in the belled leaves,

Before they shout from buds keyed,
To syncopate in sun by bopping bees

Who buzz with jazzy pillowing waft,
Of daisy downs, in mid air to reeds,

Lips newly sprouted, banding green,
Groove myriad symphonies of colour

And the roots of trees tempo tapping,
Into waters plucked, earthy sounding,

All voice, with woodland birds, in joys
Do trumpet, O what new life to come.

My younger brother still fishes
when he can, when the weather
is agreeable, when he can afford
some tackle and beer for the cooler.

He sits alone on the river bank
and smokes and drinks and waits
in the shifting shade of cottonwoods
for the unmistakable pull on the line.

He fishes whether
the fish are biting
or not. He is intimate with
psychology and the placid
deceit of undisturbed water.

My brother is an angry man.

As kids, we fished
together on the dock
and killed them
with our hands.

Careful not to kneel
on scattered hooks,
we baited the lines
on our knees a foot
above brackish water.

We dropped fish heads
off the edge of the dock
and watched them float
down, almost out of sight,
settling into final stillness
only to snap back to life
(or the false throes of death)
by the white claws of *****
picking them into oblivion—
goodbye eyes,
goodbye gills,
goodbye teeth,
goodbye scales.

Brother, I don’t remember anymore:
was it triumph or merely shame
that left us shivering in the sun?

everything of
me was choir-song

every bolt of
air,
every summer
moon,
every drop of
cooling rain,

in spring i
melted like
a hedgerow,
in gold and
sky-bronze,

in summer i
gathered the sky
to my branches
green with shadows
of longing,

in autumn i trembled
downwards like a
girl unwinding her
hair,

and in winter i froze
on the doorstep
all black branch
and cold
rigging on
a barren ship,

everything of me
was choir-song and
i had the most
beautiful
purple throat,

i was a soft
melody of love
on a strange
moody day.

I felt this primal urge
This trance-like instinct
To set things right
In case I have to leave
Move on, so to speak

So
I took my jaundiced eye
And rolled it from corner to corner
Of this, my situation
And I felt so very small and hard
Lost in largeness
For cynicism is a tight thing
Which allows little movement
A strange kind of chastity

And then, you see
Changes
Honesty demanded that I see more
Grow, so to speak

And oh, my poor sore eyes
See how the children starve
All over this bitter world
This bitter, sickened world
And cynicism did this
Through the slack hands of millions
Who still refuse to believe
That things can be changed

                                    By Phil Roberts

fine Furhman's Funeral Home
used the best alchemy money could
buy, to keep her flesh fresh

and a master seamstress
sewed her wicked wounds so not
a single soul could see

she was stabbed forty times
from her rubicund cheeks to her
pedicured toes

Furhman's was the best, above
the mediocre rest, in gifting mourners
with a pleasant view

when I got their bill in the mail
it had an itemized list, which included
a charge I had to contest

not because of penury or pettiness
for I am a wealthy weeping father, but
I couldn't see spending a red dime

for crimson polish they painted
on dead toes, slid in slick hose, and
hid in patent leather shoes

my wife said write a check for the
full amount, crying this was not about
what we the living could yet see

Baton Rouge, April, 1989

I see black ones, white ones,
tall ones, short ones

the stops have no benches;
only signs, saying:

we stop here, to ****** you peasants
from the mean streets

some lean on the poles, weary
of waiting for their ride

or the winning lottery ticket
they dream of buying

others hunker, if their knees
still allow such a stance

or by chance, pride doesn't
keep them upright

the last one I saw was curled
in fetal repose

dead or just resting, preparing
for a new beginning?

I will never know, for I didn't
stop, at the bus stop

but I'm with them, traveling hope's
haggard, hapless highway

You’d like to think such work was done by stolid, silent monks
Quilling ancient parchment in some great hall,
Stilted shafts of sunlight filtered by primordial dust,
Incense wafting on unseen breezes as only incense can,
Time measured in the tap of finger cymbals, the odd table-top gong,
But the reality was, as reality is wont to be,
The very essence of mundane:
An unprepossessing warehouse in an unremarkable neighborhood
In a better-days-gone-by northeastern city
All high ceilings, fluorescent lighting, owlish men and women
Hunched over not-quite-obsolescent Macs,
Rifling through squat, square metal cabinets
Filled to overflow with sundry clippings and clip-art,
Fighting deadlines and technical demons
In order to have camera-ready copy done in time
To meet the narrow print window of the small newspaper
Which committed these noble teachings to paper
(The pressmen watching them quick-step the plates in,
Bemused to an extent, but a print job is a print job is a print job.)

All of this in the past of course,
Certain things being pedestrian yet inexorable,
The newspaper falling victim to the nuances of readership and ROI,
The improbability of top-line growth, the inevitability of retrenchment,
Its press operations shut down and moved elsewhere,
The old press bay converted to the most micro of micro-business,
A concern selling chocolates and other sweets
(One assumes His Holiness is unaware of such events,
Although you’d hope that he would, upon hearing the tale,
Smile that particular smile, thousand-watt yet somewhat inscrutable,
And golf-clap his hands and chuckle, Sweeeet.  Ah, sweet.)