C.S. fuQUA
It ain’t the same, Casey
Lazy pitch curves away
from the hefty batter
who reaches, connects, sends the ball
over left-field fence.
I yawn.
The pitcher looks like the son
of my sixth-grade team’s coach.
We went number one that year.
The coach had watched me pitch during warm-up,
but his son, in the end, got the nod
and I got the left-field boonies.
We lost twice to our main rival,
but won the league on record.
I hit every game I played,
but was out sick the game
our worst batter knocked a homer.
Then came the last game,
a pop-up to left and my glove
that put us one out closer
to the championship.
Back then, we got a buzz off Mountain Dew
not homogenized lab hormones.
Another pitch.
My wife pokes my shoulder.
You could at least pretend to watch.
Not even that.
Not quite right
The envelope’s thickness is certainty;
all materials have been returned,
even the cover letter
defining her as a student,
and what kind of track record is that?
The last fellow, in his generic response,
even got her name wrong,
which tells you a thing or two.
It was the same when I began,
seeking the first to say,
This is good.
Then credit built upon credit,
a shame when the first rejected
later became the most accepted.
Not sure why those with imagined power
are more amazed by window dressing
than the beauty it frames.
Have Patience
She worries the world will end
before she’s had a full life,
my own fear when I was her age.
Under nuclear threat back then,
we giggled through duck and cover
as we watched films
proclaiming American bravery
by incinerating Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Even first graders recognize ignorance.
Global warming, terrorism,
super bugs, and asteroids
were science fiction to us,
now science fact
reserved for her generation.
My generation’s nearly used up,
yet we worry on
as though we haven’t aged a day.
Maybe that’s the trouble,
worrying over the big problems
as the little ones consume us,
failing to appreciate the freshness
of new experience,
the caress of Gulf winds,
the cleansing of a summer rain.
Have patience with me.
I’m an old man.
But I’m learning.
C.S. FUQUA’s books include White Trash & Southern ~ Collected Poems ~ Vol. I, Big Daddy’s Fast-Past Gadget, Hush, Puppy! A Southern Fried Tale (children’s picture book), Rise Up (short fiction collection), Wolfshadow (with Robert Edward Graham), The Native American Flute: Myth, History, Craft, The Swing: Poems of Fatherhood, Divorced Dads, and Notes to My Becca, among others. His work has appeared in publications such as Boston Poetry Magazine, Main Street Rag, Pudding, Dark Regions, The MacGuffin, Christian Science Monitor, Cemetery Dance, Bogg, Year's Best Horror Stories XIX, XX and XXI, Slipstream, The Old Farmer's Almanac, The Writer, and Honolulu Magazine.
Lazy pitch curves away
from the hefty batter
who reaches, connects, sends the ball
over left-field fence.
I yawn.
The pitcher looks like the son
of my sixth-grade team’s coach.
We went number one that year.
The coach had watched me pitch during warm-up,
but his son, in the end, got the nod
and I got the left-field boonies.
We lost twice to our main rival,
but won the league on record.
I hit every game I played,
but was out sick the game
our worst batter knocked a homer.
Then came the last game,
a pop-up to left and my glove
that put us one out closer
to the championship.
Back then, we got a buzz off Mountain Dew
not homogenized lab hormones.
Another pitch.
My wife pokes my shoulder.
You could at least pretend to watch.
Not even that.
Not quite right
The envelope’s thickness is certainty;
all materials have been returned,
even the cover letter
defining her as a student,
and what kind of track record is that?
The last fellow, in his generic response,
even got her name wrong,
which tells you a thing or two.
It was the same when I began,
seeking the first to say,
This is good.
Then credit built upon credit,
a shame when the first rejected
later became the most accepted.
Not sure why those with imagined power
are more amazed by window dressing
than the beauty it frames.
Have Patience
She worries the world will end
before she’s had a full life,
my own fear when I was her age.
Under nuclear threat back then,
we giggled through duck and cover
as we watched films
proclaiming American bravery
by incinerating Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Even first graders recognize ignorance.
Global warming, terrorism,
super bugs, and asteroids
were science fiction to us,
now science fact
reserved for her generation.
My generation’s nearly used up,
yet we worry on
as though we haven’t aged a day.
Maybe that’s the trouble,
worrying over the big problems
as the little ones consume us,
failing to appreciate the freshness
of new experience,
the caress of Gulf winds,
the cleansing of a summer rain.
Have patience with me.
I’m an old man.
But I’m learning.
C.S. FUQUA’s books include White Trash & Southern ~ Collected Poems ~ Vol. I, Big Daddy’s Fast-Past Gadget, Hush, Puppy! A Southern Fried Tale (children’s picture book), Rise Up (short fiction collection), Wolfshadow (with Robert Edward Graham), The Native American Flute: Myth, History, Craft, The Swing: Poems of Fatherhood, Divorced Dads, and Notes to My Becca, among others. His work has appeared in publications such as Boston Poetry Magazine, Main Street Rag, Pudding, Dark Regions, The MacGuffin, Christian Science Monitor, Cemetery Dance, Bogg, Year's Best Horror Stories XIX, XX and XXI, Slipstream, The Old Farmer's Almanac, The Writer, and Honolulu Magazine.