For Stevie B.

Stevie fell today

due to the baseball player’s disease

I hate baseball

the one summer I was in Little League

I was only up once

hit a double, the rest of the time, benched

was it because I hit Ronnie Hill

with a bat on the cheek?

I was learning about women, girls 

and was playing with Carolyn K. a beautiful cousin

mother called and reminded me

I was due at Schofield park

I left the idea of childhood sensuality

and didn’t take it up again

until Stevie B. neighbor K. D. 

offered herself for reading lessons

sitting tightly beside her reading

“Peyton Place”

how hot her cheek was against mine

but she offered other sweets to other boys

then we went away to college

even with fundamentalist rules

once we stayed out all night

with girls we scarcely knew

because we were having car trouble

on Route 128

south of  the campus, north of Boston

The second year Stevie B. dropped out

met a girl at the hot rod racing track

moved to Ha’waii started a family

drafted but didn’t have to go to Nam

because his father had been taken on Okinawa

he inherited his handiness with tools

ran a water sprinkler business

until some President’s recession

and returned to chilly Maine

he and Ginnie kept at a Christian faithfulness

their children produced many

going out in the world

so he has had a successful term

now in pain at God’s gate

the world suffers remarkable tension

so as his body hurts him

may he be given relief 

and pass easily

to the land of Saturday yellow eyed beans

and jokes washed down

with clear Mirror Lake  water

Kendall Merriam, Home, 3/28/2020 3:55 PM

Listening to Phyllis answer spelling questions and the smell of baking beans a la’ Grammie Blackman