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Blue Snow and the Heavy Bat

Larry S. Lafferty

December air is never heavy
Until it grabs your throat and holds
On, slamming the chosen words right
Back down to your gut where you will
Never think to look.
Blown down Harwood Avenue
Like two crushed and balled hot dog wrappers,
We swirl and flash and pray
That the garbage cans and street sweepers
Don’t find us
Before we find them.

Blue coats are best for this kind of weather
But I don’t have mine. Yours looks just right
Until I touch your arm.
The blue fades and runs into the sidewalk cracks.
You laugh. I didn’t want you to, and that’s what
I am thinking when the man across the street throws
The snowball at us, and it becomes unknown
Whether he is friend or foe.
Whether the snowball is malicious or magical.
I want to know because I have never known a snowball to lie.

I touch your hand, and your skin starts
To fade and run into the sidewalk cracks.
You laugh again. I guess I mind
All this, and you, maybe you don’t?
We wait for the second snowball, because those are the rules,
One snowball follows the first,
But the man is gone,
Leaving only his smile, a grey coat and a scarf.
Now why would he do that?

Next thing I know, you say
“Crystal” rhymes with “pistol,”
So I say that sounds like
“Smoking snowball guns”
And you laugh for the third time.
Then, since we have been breathing,
We become much older and I am standing
In your room in my underwear, with a baseball
Cap on, reciting “Casey At The Bat,” and I act
Out all the parts, the forlorn fandom, the booming
Umpires, Mudville’s bit-player players,
The Mighty Casey.
And I get it right, all the way
To the last stanza when I cheat,
Checking my crib notes for the sake of accuracy
As well as the good people of Mudville.
It’s still a pretty good show,
You are clapping when I ask you
To remember that old day and did you think
The snowball was malicious or magical,
And you pat my head and tell me,
We see the beginning,
The beginning sees the end,
The melt of blue snow.
I still strike out at the end of the poem
(that’s what I do), but you don’t mind
(that’s what you do).
You smile for the fourth time,
You say, come to bed.



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