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.

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.)

There was another brother whom history forgets
And though born a fisherman, he preferred other nets.
The coterie of rink rats who lived on the Left Coast
Thought he was sine qua non, and they would often boast
He’s better than his brother Joe,
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gi-o.

His slapper had heat to make a goalie wet himself;
His wrister was money either five-hole or top-shelf.
After the goaltender felt another puck **** by,
He’d curse and bang the crossbar as fans took up the cry
He’s better than his brother Joe,
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gi-o.

He dominated rinks out West like no other man
From Calgary to Saskatoon, Fresno to Spokane.
He’d hat tricks in Winnipeg, six-point games in Moose Jaw
Moving scribes to hackneyed verse written in fits of awe.
He’s better than his brother Joe,
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gi-o.

Though the man was a fine skater, strong, agile and fleet
The slightest flaw in the ice caused anguish to his feet
And he would scold arena crews—What’d you call this mush?
‘Tis nothing but chips and ruts; I’d rather skate on slush!
(More prickly than his brother Joe,
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gio.)

After one match in Oakland on ice unduly rough
He stormed into the locker room, shouting ‘Nuff’s enough!
He didn’t change his sweater as he stormed out the door,
Hopping on a trolley car, to be seen never more
(He’s a bit loony, don’t you know.
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gi-o.)

He was sighted in the Yukon, once or perhaps twice
Engaged in some mad mission to find the perfect ice.
Neither man nor beast can say what became of this fool,
Though bits of skate lace appear in petrified bear stool
(Tastes better than his brother Joe?
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gi-o.)

He is the sort who seems well cast
As the Grim Reaper’s right-hand man:
Hulking, deliberative in movement and thought alike,
Generally doing the heavy lifting of the direct route to the afterlife
With a grim solemnity not shared by the funeral directors
In whose service he lifts, wrangles, and grunts
(They are, to be fair, not the black-hatted, pale-complected ghouls
Littering Dickensian tales or Monty Python sketches;
They are businessman, Rotarians, purveyors of cheerful websites
And nine-year-old giggle-worthy sponsorships of Little League teams)
Performing his duties wordlessly, monotonously
Sparing no time for idle chat or frivolity
(Though on one occasion, when Lew Jackson from over in St. Mary’s
Brought in a women that he’d known as a girl,
A girl who had found time under the bleachers for everyone but him,
And had turned that gift into two stories of gabled comfort
Plus a membership at the Elk County Country Club;
He’d looked at the box and sighed Well, this is a bit of a surprise.
I’d always had her burnin’ up somewhere else.)

Crematory Lenny is a fisherman, his normal haunts
Some shady bank on the Clarion’s East Branch,
Or one of the sturdier railroad trestles just outside town
(The trains not having run through Montmorenci Falls in his memory)
Though if there is a Sunday where his ministrations are not required,
He will drive up to the Kinzua Dam,
Sometimes eschewing pole and tackle altogether,
Choosing to simply wade into the silence of the reservoir.
He is strictly a catch-and-release fisherman,
Even returning sunnys and chubs best simply thrown on the creekside
(Good stream management and all that)
Back to the water, freely admitting that, in culinary terms,
Perch, trout, and bass are simply take-it-or-leave-it propositions.
Sometimes, though, he will foul hook one,
Or come upon some fish deeply scarred or tumor-ridden,
And he will reach into coat or pants pocket
To remove the garden ***** he never travels without,
Proceeding to dig a small hole, just so wide and so deep,
To serve as a final piscine resting place.
He would not, indeed could not, begin to explain
The whys and wherefores of these internments,
Being a virtual Caiban if matters stray from the weather and shop-talk,
Nor does he pause to ruminate upon the dearly departed,
Simply casting once more in stealth and silence,
With no sound save the whizzing whisper of the drag, the brief plop
As the lure breaks the surface.

We’d known each other forever, or all the time that counted, anyways,
Sitting side-by-side on the bus from kindergarten
Until you and your mom moved up to Fifth Street,
At the cafeteria table, on the swings at rec
(Despite the considerable risk of contracting girl cooties)
And always but always on the gym bleachers for movie day,
Which, on the day in question, was "Paddle To The Sea",
And as I sat and watched the small, hand painted wooden craft
Improbably navigate the great blue ribbon
Bisecting the land of apple pie and Chevrolet
All the way to the Gulf of Mexico and into the great, blue ocean
It was as nothing else--that gym, the other kids
The comforting clack of the ancient eight-millimeter projector,
And, for that forty-odd minutes, even you--did not, could not exist.
As the lights came up, I looked over in your direction
Noticing the remnants of tears on your cheeks.
Hey, it’s OK to cry, I said
(Girls allowed such luxuries, after all)
But you whirled around at glared at me
(Even at that early age, stunned at the depth and breadth
Of my misunderstanding, my utter stupidity)
And said in a tone which neither sought nor brooked argument
That just can’t happen. No toy boat ever makes it to the ocean,
And for any number of days afterward
You would, apropos of nothing, angrily blurt out
How stupid, stupid, stupid that movie was,
And how you hoped they would cancel movie day from now on.

We had, nature taking its course and all that
(As I used to say to you at the time,
It’s not my fault you ended up with ****)
Our dalliance in that murky interval beyond friendship,
Fumbling about your bedroom
On those afternoons in-between sport seasons
Or on the old Friday night in the back of the balcony
At the old Rialto Theatre
(In its final death throes at the time, deserted enough most nights
I could have taken you right in the front row wholly unnoticed)
Though always within limits,
As you had no designs on becoming
Some drop-out baby mama patiently home-bound,
Spending mornings sweeping the detritus of the mill
From some weathered, crumbling front stoop
While waiting for me to come home from a spot on the line
As we lived happily hand-to-mouth ever after.

It could not, of course, have lasted.
The fall came where you headed off to Cornell,
An unlikely landing spot for a mill-town girl;
We sort of stayed in touch for a couple of months,
But come the tail-end of your second semester
You simply disappeared without a trace.
The sheriff’s boys up there had assumed you’d jumped
Into one of the scenic gorges
Which were the pride and joy of the town’s Chamber of Commerce.  
(I’d laughed in spite of myself, the notion that you would end up
In some pool below a waterfall or some shallows of an inlet
Almost too cosmically comic to fathom)
Though there was a rumor that someone fitting your description
Had dove into the Seneca Canal
(But clad in a bathing suit,
Like someone enjoying a brief, early-season swim)
And for the briefest of moments I had a vision of you swimming
Up to Clinton’s Ditch to where it met with the Oswego Canal
And the big lake, going up the frosty St. Lawrence
And thence to the very Atlantic itself,
But I knew that was a fancy, indeed an outright madness
Inconceivable in the small-town cosmology
Of a young girl intimate in the true nature of toys and oceans.

The pin wobbled in a manner which would tantalize another man,
But he knew, surely as he knew his own name,
Knew in the very maw of his soul,
That it would remain implacably upright.
He was right, of course, the seven-pin standing ***** as a toy soldier
In complete defiance of tenets of physics and divine mercy.
He’d been down this road before,
More times than he’d care to remember:
Some occasions of his own making, short-arming the last ball,
Having it hit the head pin too flush,
Or going Brooklyn and leaving the ten unscathed,
But equally often seemingly the victim of random fate or its like,
Where he’d the pocket just so,
With all the action you’d need or could muster,
Yet somehow the pins would bounce off the wall in patterns
Inexplicable via Newton's laws, the work of gremlins or voodoo,
Perhaps the vexatious ghost of some manual pin-setter of long ago.
He’d put together eleven straight strikes
On every lane in the house a half-dozen times,
Some nights when the boards were as giving
As a rich and doting grandmother,
Other times in sport conditions
Where no one else even sniffed two hundred
(On one such evening, he’d scored a perfect game
On the ancient shuffle-alley game tucked into a corner of the bar, Celebrating, in a manner of speaking,
By taking chunky, sad-faced Penny Marie
From the payroll office at the mill
Up against a wall in the dimly-lit alley behind the building.)

After enduring the usual consolation and confabulation,
He left the alley, walking up the hill to the old two-story on Fifth St.
Which he shared with his mother and other memories,
Though the house bore little trace of his existence, present or otherwise
(His mother had, just once, put a few of his trophies and plaques
Out on display on the mantelpiece in the parlor;
He’d insisted that she take them down forthwith.
Buncha ******* plastic and stamped tin, he’d snapped,
Don’t mean a ******* thing to no ******* body.)
He’d nodded to her on his way through to his room
(She still, out of force of habit, still waited up for him,
Part simple inertia, part hopeful belief
In the talismanic nature of the maternal)
Grunting Y’know, one of those nights in reply to her inquiry
As to how well or otherwise the evening went.
He’d undergone the usual bedtime ministrations
(An indifferent ****, the near-frenzied tooth brushing
Which failed to remove the effluvium which accompanied him home
Courtesy of bad bar pizza and Rolling Rock)
Before another evening of fitful dreams
Consisting of hazy yet glorious episodes
Which never seemed to reach fruition before the advent
Of an unwelcome and vaguely malevolent sunrise.

There are, dear daughter, oceans between us
(At your insistence, though I say this without rancor)
A buffer from the memories of our sad antics,
Pottery reduced to shards, doors slammed in such a manner
That the very jambs ached in regret,
The hinges wept in the weight of their sadness,
Though the human heart, mapped by its own wan geography,
Is immune to such trifles as mere distance.
We have tarried in foul gardens of sophistry,
Engaged in predictable shows of dramatics,
As if our outbursts can be measured in some calculus
Seeking to ascertain our devotion
In the rending of garments, the shrieking collapse upon the floor,
For it has been revealed to me
That the spectacle of our grand lamentations,
Worn by us like the finest silver-threaded garments,
Are no more than the strutting and preening
Of some noisome, foul peacock.
No, we must accept, indeed embrace, the notion
That our love is as imperfect as our selves,
And that we must approach its altar
Not with grandiloquence and haughty pomp,
But meekly, bearing the simple gift our person
Modestly cloaked in the simple black gown of humility.