Last Softball Game in A2
Dan DeVries
for Van Hull, B
This old guy was on the mound.
I was playing center field, I
remember this.
In left was a tall
redhaired dude whose name
I do not remember.
It was also my first
softball game in Ann Arbor.
They never asked me to be
on the team, and I never asked
them either. I don’t remember
any of the rest of this,
it was all
told to me.
I had a wife.
I had a fellowship to a great
university in Amsterdam, a place
of which I still haven’t heard
except in their stories.
And that there are canals there.
The pitcher, what was his name
again, they tell me he used
to be a catcher? He was
wearing the most gawdawful plaid
bermuda shorts.
I went after that softball
because it started from him.
They tell me he recommended
me for that fellowship. I
have no dount that that is
true. I just can’t remember
his name. The other guy,
the left fielder with the red hair
I don’t remember him either although
they tell me he had something
to do with a fellowship I got later
in Houston. I hear
he is chair of a department
somewhere on the Red River
in the heart of middle Amerika.
(San Francisco, 9/22/06)
for Van Hull, B
This old guy was on the mound.
I was playing center field, I
remember this.
In left was a tall
redhaired dude whose name
I do not remember.
It was also my first
softball game in Ann Arbor.
They never asked me to be
on the team, and I never asked
them either. I don’t remember
any of the rest of this,
it was all
told to me.
I had a wife.
I had a fellowship to a great
university in Amsterdam, a place
of which I still haven’t heard
except in their stories.
And that there are canals there.
The pitcher, what was his name
again, they tell me he used
to be a catcher? He was
wearing the most gawdawful plaid
bermuda shorts.
I went after that softball
because it started from him.
They tell me he recommended
me for that fellowship. I
have no dount that that is
true. I just can’t remember
his name. The other guy,
the left fielder with the red hair
I don’t remember him either although
they tell me he had something
to do with a fellowship I got later
in Houston. I hear
he is chair of a department
somewhere on the Red River
in the heart of middle Amerika.
(San Francisco, 9/22/06)
posted by Frans Vander Grove @ 11:11 PM
4 Comments:
At 8:22 PM,
Anonymous said…
I like the poem. An injury? I used to fish for cat fish on the Red River when I lived in East Grand Forks. I'm glad you mention the Red in your poem.
At 2:28 PM,
David Schaafsma said…
Well, I laughed a lot in reading this poem, because it is a poem about memory and how bad it can get. I think most "realist" poetry is not sp realistic about memory; iot gives the impression that memory must be incredibly detailed and fresh and alive. That's the (sometimes false) hope in it, that life is that immediate, always. But in reality sometimes the memories we want to keep are fading, nearly lost. Lydia Davis has a couple books on the topic of memory loss, one short story collection, Almost No Memory and one novel, The End of the Story, which is about a woman's fading memories of an affair she had with a guy like ten years ago. I was reminded of it reading this poem.
At 9:27 PM,
Frans Vander Grove said…
Hey anonymous, show yourself, ever do any flathead noodling? Guess that doesn't get that far north, and the Red, after all, flows into Arctic drainage, don't it? "The Author"
At 12:41 PM,
David Schaafsma said…
I thought William Pankonin might have posted as anonymous, since HIS un-anonymous post came just one minute after that! And, Pankonin lived up there. He's the guy who wrote the baseball war poem.
Your humble invetsigative reporter, etc.
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