Ballpark Paintings
for Andy Jurinko

Wall-wide murals at Mickey Mantle's,

a central perk hot spot fashionable

with super exact paintings

of Ebbets and Crosley Park

and Yankee Stadium situations

up the ying and yang

for me, the hour-late,

because nobody from Arizona

ever knows what time it is

But the baseball artiste had waited,

patient enough for me

to do a drop in from the desert,

for a burger and some chatter,

to bat with a baguette,

as the son of a South Texan

bewildered already by the bowels

of Penn Station, intimidated

as the wild wolf chased on the field

by sea gulls at Shea Stadium,

who had spent the previous day

walking across Manhattan

to his studio, wearing a ridiculous

reddish purple beret,

a spontaneous purchase

at a military supply store,

who reached the apartment

in the shadow of the Twin Towers,

eviscerated but enduring

the wide-eyed, world-weary

embrace of glass canyons,

the smell of sweet rolls

and garbage wafting in from rows

and rows of back alleys, taxis rolling

like bullets, wild-eyed preachers

mixed up by dirty magazines,

every language spoken at once

as public drinkers, private thinkers,

compassionate aliens in action

sold books on blankets

Only the pastoral lights could paint

a bolt-down for the bogey out there,

saving me from a big bad swing at my

home run hollow head