by Peter G. Mladinic
If I could touch what touches everything,
if I could talk to the animals, if I could
remember the Bronx of 1953 as well as you,
the Polo Grounds would be my memory, one
we shared, you in stands, the Say Hey Kid
in center, across the river, in center Mick.
His glove like Willie’s catches the high pop.
I think of base paths, a batter’s box, a dash
third to home. Mantle for speed, power,
Mays for all-around everything in the Polo
Grounds, you remember sitting in stands
and I vaguely seeing Mantle but more so
an old man’s eye bloodied by a line drive
hit off, say, Brooks Robinson’s bat that day
the Yanks hosted Baltimore, Mick figurine-
small way out in center, but step into
the batter’s box, cousin, as the Mick did
and the Say Hey Kid, to touch the width
and breadth of what touches all, everything.
New York at Mantle’s fingertips, New York
in the pocket of the glove of a kid, Willie
Mays from cotton-field Alabama, Mick
from dustbowl Oklahoma, and you from
greenery of Dumont, the country it was
then, to ride in a Buick across the GW,
step into shadows tall brick walls, courtyard
guarded by stone lions and gargoyles
on ledges and with strength of your eight
year old arms open thick, black-glossed
double doors, high on a hill. So many
cobbled hills, down to the wide Concourse,
sprawl of shops on Fordham, canopies,
the RKO marquee, all the while brick walls
burnished red, brown, light tan of five-,
six-story buildings. The hand sets a potted
begonia on a fire escape, no more than dust
today, that in ‘53 when baseball was king,
joined its other hand to clap a storm
for Mays or Mantle. Look at the tiny curls
of blond hairs on his powerful forearm!
A child might have said to himself to herself,
I love Mickey Mantle, or Willie knocks it
out of the park for me, every time. To come
from whatever he was seeing, cotton under
a big sky, Stars Fell on Alabama, uphill,
and in broad light feel something like God’s
hand (if I could touch what touches
everything) on his shoulder and hear a voice
say Willie, or Mick, this is yours, all of it.
Peter Mladinic’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past, is due out in November 2023 from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.
