A Poem for Father's Day

Yes, I know Father's Day was last Sunday, but I just found this poem today.  It's by an American poet named Joseph Fasano (born 1982).

My Father Watching Baseball

What he doesn't say

is he wanted this with all his life,

the smell of grass, the crack of bat

each morning,

the whole world simplified to wonder.

You have to understand

he had nothing.  You have to understand

his father still carried a war in him

and my father had to carry it also.

It was 1973, once.  My father stood

on the mound of Yankee Stadium, the men

who had invited him were watching,

and he leaned back and asked his life

not to fail him.  It didn't

work out, as the cheap books say.

A whole life selling tools and hope to strangers.

(A life will try to call its prison

beauty.  Every morning, every night

of trial.)

But now he sits

in the aching of his rocker

and mutters "we" when he means

a team of strangers, and calls me up

to ask me if I saw it,

and tells me of a game I have no stake in,

and the green grass, and the trouble

of his country,

and the things men do

to win the game they're playing,

the double play, the bunt, the K, the homer,

and his favorite play of all,

the sacrifice.