Playing Baseball with a Pocket Knife

By Christopher Citro

photo by Allen on Pexels

Raised by retired parents I have that, why bother
I'll sit picnic tabled and watch the clouds go by.
The battle, that position worked out, I see through it all.
I tear packets, toss the seeds across the open ground.
The sky can do the rest. This boy burying plastic
Chewbaccas between beechnut roots, my boy.
Sit beside me, not too close. Here's how you open
the knife, straighten the short blade, pull the other
to an angle, balance it between your legs and
with a forefinger's soft tip, flick the end so it spins
into the summer air before sticking back in
the picnic table seat and hopefully not in your knee.
Tip only: home run. Tip and large blade: a triple.
Large blade only: a double. Large blade and bottom
touching: a single. If it lands flat on its back
with the blades in the air like legs: it's a walk.
Anything else—falling on its side, entering
your knee, dropping to the dirt—you're out.
We nail fat to a tree and the woodpeckers land.
Sound of dishes—the good CorningWare—
clinking from the kitchen window. Psst
from another can of Busch, like a secret
about to be whispered. Struggle doesn't matter.
What matters is an open button-down shirt,
an August evening, a drive up to the corner for
ice cream after dinner. My father's two grooves
either side of his nose where his bifocals rested.
He'd take them off to laugh. Mom picked them up,
How can you see through these? They're filthy.
My dad reached and put them on again.

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