Those summer days.

Apple pie, you remember,
shrieks and yells and breezy-haired kids on bikes, you remember,
baseball, oh baseball, those interminable games, you remember,

I remember them summer days,
an inning an evening and nine of them interminable - swing, SWING! - yet being there
for one reason, to see a boy bat a bat, bat a ball, the boy my brother,

my brother.

‘My little Dutch boy,’ our mom called him,
and he swung his bat hard and it took a summer of evenings and innings to realise he was twice the ballplayer I was;
I was fresh into teen years when he entered summer sports in serious;

He brought his smirk and smile in serious to the mound, to the plate, his teasing countenance friendly but firm;
behind the plate a titanium force of being, squaring up to battle sliding runners and arrogant hitters,

Summer baseball goes and goes, it went on and on and on, no running clock to ensure a finite end; instead a nine-time series of trudging back and forths between infield and out, dugout and batter’s box, swapping turns at swinging and catching,

and if you’re out there, if you’re playing, then you’re in the thick, you’re gaming and it means something and for an ace the pace is race, aces race, time races…

if you’re in the bleachers, it means something, maybe, but it doesn’t race, the sands of time are slow and small, crawl, they slowly crawl, so slow

But those summer days, I remember him and his blond, his Dutch blond,

And I still get pride every time I remember
those summer days, and now I want apple pie.