@budtheteacher provided a prompt today that pushed me into extended metaphor. Not sure it worked for me, but I liked the challenge!
Pinch Hit
History hits this second
like ball smacking bat,
or is it the other way around?
Either way, the crack of collision cannot be ignored.
No one is safe.
"Heads up!" we yell,
but most move to a fetal position,
arms protecting a hidden head.
The pitch: My parents were married today,
nearly four decades ago. A curve ball.
The swing: Pretend it was the game plan all along.
It took me thirty years to realize
I was the curve
that had them swinging.
The play: The ball drops into left center;
the runner goes from still to sprint.
A child changes everything,
until it doesn't and life returns to being
what we know. Inning after inning.
Sunflower seed shells accumulate on the concrete.
Smack! In a second everything is in motion again.
Someone heads for home, someone prepares for the force of the slide.
The sound lets us know,
--the sound of then becoming now, becoming forever--
on the field, in the stands
no one is safe.
1 comment:
The poem continues to open, as metaphors do. "No one is safe" plays a bit hauntingly but perhaps in the way that stirs appropriate vigilance. For me, the reassurance in this, particularly given the context of the anniversary and the attributed cause of it, comes in the photographs shown in your blog: the beautiful next generation. How can we presume to know the descendants. Thank you for the poetry.
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