I played Little League baseball (ages 6-12). My last year I made the Arlington County All-Star Team (Virginia) as a first baseman, but then ultimately chose to play tennis in middle and high school. Historically speaking, I know more about baseball than any other sport.
Please don’t leave me now
that you’ve seen the future.
My ink is real and you can touch
my paper with your hand holding
words, the ones pressed by my metal.
Permanent black rune, my tattooed
sentences offer so much more than
the screen, where mistakes disappear.
Delete, delete, delete-so easy to
forget all the missteps and time taken
to roll sheet after sheet. But each
letter, each tap, was your imprinted
mind. Go to the computer, but this
crumpled beauty, you will never find.
my daughter already talks about the
car she wants an Audi, new, shiny
that her friends will admire like
her iPhone with apps that take
wrinkles out of faces in photos
I tell her about my maroon
dented station wagon, Pontiac
1986 Michigan-made to barely
last past puberty
I parked it with pride
my piece of remembering
that life is unreliable
always ready to
start then stop
blind to history my daughter
will never know the struggle of
driving a car that quit, gave up
for her they don’t exist
like rotary phones
like an indigenous name
turned into painted steel
Daniel W. Polk 