POEM: Do I Even Like Baseball?

Do I even like baseball?

Or do I merely like the way

Baseball makes me remember

Watching baseball as a kid,

On holiday in America,

Wishing I had grown up in America

And not the UK?

Grown up to be a kid who loves

Baseball

Instead of the kid I actually was?

Is it baseball that I like

Or those memories of watching it with my uncle

In his Long Island den?

As he explained to me the rules

And I felt I was being inducted

Into something far more special

That the football back home

That my own father thought so obvious

He never bothered to explain?

Do I really love the Red Sox

Or just that summer all those years later

on Cape Cod?

Left alone in my mother’s house,

Watching them lose three games to the Yankees

(Including that epic Jeter catch)

In the days before July 4th?

Fireworks rained out and then

another loss against Atlanta.

Yet they went on to win the World Series.

Their first since 1918.

I couldn’t help but admire such underdogs.

They won it again in 2013

The same week as my mother’s funeral.

A different house on Cape Cod and this time no fireworks.

Except the ones at Fenway Park.

We watched together on TV

And took small solace from our grief.

It felt nice to smile about something.

After such a shitty year.

Maybe memories are all we mean

When we say we like a thing?

Familiarity evoking feeling

That feels like something we like?

I think I do like baseball.

Maybe even love it.

Although,

As I wrote this poem,

The Sox scored 6 against Chicago,

Coming from behind to win the game,

And I was staring at this screen.

I read a lot too while watching baseball.

So many breaks and pauses.

But this is the first time I have written

In between - and during - the innings.

A sport with time for creation?

A reflection recreation?

A game designed for long conversations and played at the pace of life.

Another reason, perhaps, to love it.

If, indeed, I really do?

POEM: In An Uber

In an Uber

Being driven somewhere I can’t be bothered to drive myself

Poorly.

Taking all the wrong turns

Because they think they know a better route

Than the route their satnav tells them.

The route I would have taken myself

(Had I been bothered to get behind the wheel).

He worked in fish and chips for forty years;

His own business.

Dreamt of wrapping chips in his sleep

(When sleep would finally come).

Worked more hours than he should so he didn’t have to pay for extra staff.

Got his sons to work for free for him too.

Until the pandemic gave him an excuse

Not to wrap chips anymore.

“Been doing this two years now,”

He tells me,

“And never once have I dreamt I am driving.

I sleep eight hours a night”

He added,

“And get to go on holidays,

Weddings,

Funerals.

Best job I ever had.”

He drops me off near enough to my destination

After missing the final turn

While complaining about some “bastard”

Who complained about him that morning

For driving in the wrong lane.

I thanked him and tipped him generously.

Glad to learn his story.

And know he’s out there somewhere now

Working the best job he ever had

And getting better at it every day.

POEM: Clearer in Haiku

I once knew someone who,

when asked for better clarity

on some instructions they had given,

which hadn’t been understood,

chose to respond in the form of a poem.

The poem didn’t work.

It was not best suited for clarity.

The person who received it missed the memorial service in the end.

They couldn’t find the venue,

despite the perfect rhymes.

I sometimes wonder if that is the problem with social media?

That we are using it,

too often,

to attempt to have conversations,

in a format which makes such conversations

impossible to have?

A medium unfit for purpose?

Like a heckler at a comedy club,

Trying to share the meaning of life,

To ears disinterested and eyes focused on someone else’s spotlight.

Right sentiment, wrong stage.

Somebody show them the door.

Comedy’s all about the timing

And this ain’t the time.

Or the place.

This is not a conversation,

This is self-harm as team sport.

Not every chrysalis leads to transformation.

(Although we can waste a lot of time

waiting for change in the dark)

A void that yells back remains,

nevertheless,

a void.

When I asked my poet friend why he’d opted for his strategy,

even though it demonstrably failed,

he told me he just liked writing poems.

When I said I didn’t understand

He said it might be clearer in haiku.

POEM: A Lesson Learnt

My mother was weeping,

again,

when she told me teaching was like

spending hours in the kitchen,

preparing a careful feast,

with love,

for a table of ungrateful eaters

who scoff the meal down,

without thanks,

and leave you to wash up the dishes,

alone.

So many weekends and evenings lost

for children who couldn’t care less

about classroom activities

which took hours to prepare,

and only seconds to destroy,

with a single roll of teenage eyes,

or a loud, exaggerated, yawn.

Leaving cruel laughter instead of wonder

and replacing wisdom with empty snark.

When she got her diagnosis

it was one of the first things that she did:

filling a skip with all those folders and box-files.

Shutting the door on disappointment.

Her legacy of recipes,

cooked only to leave her cold.

No longer needed

now that time was too precious to waste.

When I started my own journey,

and began the same hopeful sacrifice

of evenings and weekends,

to cook nourishing meals

for mouths that refused to open,

or that swallowed glumly,

without thanks,

I felt my mother’s presence

as I slaved over that same hot stove.

The one she had warned me not to touch.

I wish she were here still to tell

how at least one of her offered lessons -

one more meal she cooked with love -

did not go unappreciated

(although it seemed so on the surface,

when I told her I knew better).

That it nourishes even now.

And I can smile with every eye-roll,

similar to my own,

and feel ok,

despite my disappointment,

after every wasted night,

because I,

unlike her,

do not cook in my kitchen alone.

No appetite for a meal served at the time;

we might creep back for leftovers,

later,

under cover of darkness.

Illuminated only by the light of a fridge,

which comes on only when we choose to pull it open.

Or,

the meal taken when given,

but gobbled

too fast to taste,

without pleasure or savouring,

might be thought of only later,

when the gnawing ache that yearns for more,

discovers it cannot feed itself.

Pearls thrown before swine,

(as she once threw them before me)

glitter still in their abandonment.

To be noticed and picked up again,

later,

by any pig who finally notices.

And in their tenacity they remind me,

that she wasn’t always wrong.