They may not sweeten after being picked, but they do seem to get softer, these aging players that were the talk of the baseball town. For some reason, they suddenly can’t get past the strike zone: watching 1980s reruns at six or seven. In bed by eleven or twelve, latest, oddly dreaming of a musky ferret locked with a declawed housecat in close quarters (something like a tiny bathroom—you know how dreams get fuzzy and funky) and that neutered cat, though poofed and angry, arched as he could be, could do nothing, unable to escape such a narrow space. And if I had a wish for them both, the players and the cat, it would be for someone to open the door, help them get out, because we all know ferrets and histories and expectations can be so viciously clawed, and if not separated from the natural way things supposedly have to work, well, it causes quite a hullaballoo, especially when you don’t know you had been declawed a long, long time ago, the moment you were discovered. Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, copyright April 3, 2024, all rights reserved
Posted in Poetry Month 2024
