2 Poems
by Robert Bradshaw
Hitting Fungoes
The runner sprints for home,
the chalk flying. Thirty thousand people
lean forward as if their horse
were crossing the finish line.
Cheers erupt like a chain
of volcanoes going off.
A fastball is shanked
into the stands and a hundred hands
fly up for it.
It happens quickly, the way streamers fly
up
when the air conditioning unit
goes on.
Surely a hundred tombstones will read
thirty, forty years from now:
"He missed the foul ball."
I'm at a local park
playing baseball with my daughter.
An air show is going on nearby.
Paratroopers are drifting like thistle
over my shoulder but my daughter,
bent down, glove ready
doesn't see them.
Hey batter batter she's yelling.
Now she's looking up
into the sky. But it isn't
a parachute she sees.
She sees a popup lifted by her father,
an overweight man in his thirties.
He stands at home plate,
hoping that his love
is never dropped.
Australopithecus Africanus And The Hall
Of Man
I found you loitering in a dark corner
of The Academy Of Sciences.
Only you were encased in glass,
as if vulnerable to infections.
You were small
and frail.
I joked with you, as if you were a friend.
You roamed savannas
with that upstart Habilis
but you took little notice
of him then.
More pressing matters were at hand.
Perhaps forests had become
legendary Edens
compared to the savanna's
tall grasses
where like a baboon
you would stand up
peering for the rustle
of a carnivore.
Baring your teeth would probably
not help. But maybe waving your arms
madly
like a group of tourists
hailing a cab
would.
We don't know
if you offered toasts
over a fresh carcass
or if you spoke at all.
But you must have known the value
of living in groups,
of sharing.
Certainly you must have been
good child bearers
and cherished
your young.
You weren't like Habilis.
He would stride off
across a field
with the upright look
of a man in an expensive suit
crossing a street in the Financial
District.
You found habitual walking
tough.
It's you my heart goes out to,
not to those proudly
lined up in the museum's Hall Of Man
like recipients on Oscar night.