Softball Game

The drive home

seems longer when we lose,

and I don’t know which is worse,

losing by ten runs, or one like tonight.

After an hour,

I still drag in the deep breaths

of exhaustion.

Lights of a semi appear behind me,

billow across the midnight sky,

dash down my mirror,

and flash past me.

Why hurry?

I won’t be able to sleep anyway.

The game threads through my mind;

each play shows me,

there isn’t a thing I could change.

I turn on the radio,

and the Red Sox are losing too.

In silence I pass the sign for a rest stop,

lift my foot, shrug

and creep back up to speed.

My wife waits.

She always asks why I drive so far

to play a game.

Love is trying to explain,

but she doesn’t understand.

On nights like this,

I’m not sure I do either.

Outgoing Tide

The pilot zigs and zags his water taxi
around the multitudes of freighters moored
in Hong Kong. Cranes scrape the clouds
as they load or unload goods. Some ships
ride high, some low. My helmsman weaves
through this web of lines and chains, evades
harbor craft pushing or pulling barges.
But he ignores the face-down body
when it bobs past. Perhaps it’s focus
on task at hand. Perhaps to him it’s normal.
The splayed position of its arms and legs
causes the corpse’s dark suit to billow
as the tide drags through the mesh of commerce.
When the body tops our wake, the setting sun
sparks off its unveiled face, the lips frozen in a smile.
The left hand gestures, goodbye, goodbye.

Morning Rounds: Operation Southern Watch
(USS Independence (CV-62))
(red skies in the morning…)

When I step out of the door onto the 08 level catwalk
I see the setting moon has washed everything to tan,
the desert, the sea, the radar antennas rotating aloft.

I only know the shirt colors of the flight deck crews
by their tasks. The red shirts pull the missile carts,
the purple gang drags the lines with the jet fuel.

Smoke rises from the oil rig fires. Like a string
of stripteasers, the flames dance on the horizon,
reddening the skies. …sailors take warning.

When the blue shirts on their tow trucks, follow
the whistles of the yellow shirts and pull the birds
into line, I complete my rounds and go below.

In the chief’s chow line, I feel the jolt of the first
launch of the day. War begins again. I still smell
the perfume of the strippers as I sit down to breakfast.

Retired Navy, I used my GI bill to get a masters in Environmental Science from Antioch New England. I edited the poetry anthology Heartbeat of New England (Tiger Moon Publication, 2000). Over 200 hundred of my poems have been published and I have signed a contract for a novel with Cyberwizard Productions.