by Phillip W. Wilson
He was not
the best Negro League player
the Dodgers could have signed.
But he was the first
so he had to be better
than legendary.
Where did his calm come from
when he took the field
amidst a rain of insults
hurled like a pyroclastic flow?
How did he show the best
in men
while men showered him
with the worst?
How could he do it
one more day
let alone the next
and then the next?
Whatever it was
burned in him
with such intensity and
white hot heat that,
like Vulcan,
he forged impenetrable armor.
Baseball retired
Jackie Robinson’s 42
for all teams for all time.
The answer to life, the universe
and everything,
is it any wonder
it is the angle at which
sunlight and water
turn into rainbows?
Phillip has recently been published in Poeming Pigeon, and received an Honorable Mention in 2020 in the Oregon Poetry Association’s Contest for new poets. He lives in Beaverton, Ore., with his wife, who is also a poet.