dodgertown... a poem

sitting in my kitchen at half past nine with a mug filled with ginger, lime, and water- I am reminded that I have not fully related my story of visiting dodgertown. i have been rudely reminded of said visit by the beautiful montage of dodger memories by eric neel at espn.com.

when i was twelve years old i spent a summer in southern missouri. i fished for croppie and hung my line in front of fat rotten carp for hours. the air was warm and the ice tea was cold and good and i felt the sweat and fire orange sparkle of bottle rockets every night.

sitting in my kitchen at my oak table taken from the farm, i think back to that trip and the trip to florida with the same longing.

i was looking back today on the career of paul lo duca. he had his best season in 2001 when i was a junior in college. he hit twenty-five home runs. he was good and young and bright-eyed. eight years later, he's in new york city, sleeping on dollar bills, cheating on his wife and blowing diamonds across waves of cool white race horses- hooves blasting red dirt galloping like roy rodgers. calm and cool. blue shadows on the trail. blue moon shining through the breeze...

i can't figure out if it was the baseball or the fishing. maybe it was the charlie daniels song that played low at seven in the morning, hanging thick in the florida air of africans and crinkly white women... i ate a pecan waffle that was filled with too many stale pecans and enjoyed it for sentimental reasons...

the smoke hangs in the south with sweet cancer in a way that it never hangs in the west... still pungent, it is strong and weighted and connected-- with the husky whisps of robert e. lee's beard and the embedded wound bleeding inside of john wilkes boothe.

the fishing. the poles were twenty dollars apiece. twenty of which i still owe matt. we used shrimp to bait the hooks. to cover our hands with the smell of gulf stream salt and rancid sea. we pierced their eyes and ran silver through their backs- trying to emulate the live glowing bounce of the long dead animal.

we met a crazy man. twenty years old and filled with medication. abercrombie and fitch pressed white t-shirts with logos. his mind filled with mixed-up thoughts of puerto ricans and murder and drugs. we didn't have any and we didn't know anybody to kill. it would've been nice to meet his dad and it would've been nice to have shaken the hand of a real vietcong killer, but the trip was too too short...

the baseball was good, too. and the fish we caught- the small pretty one, struggling with the barb, sitting on the ledge of the pier, splinters in its scales, slapping the water and swimming away. the croaker and the pregnant one we let go- its eggs popping out of its belly.

i saw scott elbert get roughed up for three homeruns. and was grouched at by tommy lasorda- his belly loose like the atlantic we walked by in port saint lucia at dusk while talking about the oysters we ate and the records we would sell if we had the time or energy or talent.

maybe the lime and the water moccasain will get me in the end.