Brad Shurmantine
The Big Yard
Stunned, still moving in a sick green haze
my widowed mom
stared at a sea of blueprints and
chose the one with the biggest yard,
a field big enough to swallow up
our pain and terror—a place
to land.
But her three boys
saw a baseball field, saw home plate
and stepped off the bases.
That hedge was the end zone
(poor bushes, whittled away
by goal line stands).
Season after season after season
side yard touch football
quick slants toward Grandview Road
pinpoint passes waited
or going long
sailing over the boxwoods
(Lance Alworth! Otis Taylor!)
to snag the ball hanging in the air
like a fat brown duck
weaving and dodging the pass rush
then awful winter and waiting
and in March backyard baseball
good old hardball
bases scorched in the weedy yard
the big maple between 2nd & 3rd
a steady shortstop, our own green monster
hotbox, wiffleball, 500, Home Run Derby
the ball bouncing off Grandview Road
for a long out
(in any other park that baby
wouldabeen outahere—)
season after season
absorbed in games
we never felt
our father’s absence
our mother’s loneliness
in the big yard
we played and grew
Brad Shurmantine lives in Napa, Ca. He spends time writing, reading, tending three gardens (sand, water, vegetable), keeping bees, taking care of chickens and cats, and working on that “husband” thing. He backpacks in the Sierras and travels when he can, and has a serious passion for George Eliot.