My friend David tells me that Jasper Johns
never takes his advice, so when David
suggests “Extra Innings,” K.C. picks up
a bat. Last April the Boston Red Sox
beat Toronto opening day, then lost
three straight. At least, Kurt, the season started,
and even losing three out of four is
preferable to off-season—as life
despite its generic unpleasantness
appears under almost all conditions
more attractive than its alternative.
Batter up. We know what wins in the end,
in “Extra Innings.” Therefore, many folks
settle for conditions of middleness,
lukewarm descending as far as lukecold,
pitch neither high nor low, volume neither
loud nor soft. Without a life, who fears death?
Even the season is out of season
unless we relish baseball, daydreaming
a game each night; then the morning paper.
After the bald surgeon making his rounds
removed the bandage from Jennifer’s neck,
he pressed tiny bandaids over drainholes
side by side like snakefang punctures. As we
drove home we sat together in silence,
touching each other lightly, as if touch
were safety. Our ecstatic young dog leapt
to see her home—and pawed her incision
open. All night I reached in the darkness
to feel her familiar body again
and at dawn brought coffee to her bedside
as ever. All morning we sought comfort
in the blessedness of the resumed hour,
in the dear repetition of daily
gestures and tasks. We breathed calmly again
until like a sudden front from the north
we remembered the word cancer. That night,
while baseball lingered on the set, my mind
reran the last days, as a crow returns
to the perfume of putrescent carcass:
The drive to the hospital, admissions,
gown, bed, and a quick night’s arduous sleep.
At six-thirty the following morning
I walked by her gurney to the metal
swoon of the elevator, then returned
to this house to wait for the surgeon’s call.
In dread of consciousness I dozed beside
the telephone; I dreamt of a garden
where tomatoes sagged erupting black juice,
where squash lapsed softly drooling corrupt lymph
and seed, where Kentucky Wonders curled up,
cankered, and dropped from the derelict vine.
When the phone rang with the surgeon’s message,
I would not have anyone else tell her:
I drove to the hospital to tell her
that the growth in her neck was malignant—
and that pathology’s slow slides required
six days to deliver a prognosis
on the likelihood of metastasis
or probability of recurrence.
The entire history of human thought,
Western and Eastern, remembers and codes
our efforts to declare the real unreal.
Kurt, I almost forgot about baseball:
How would the Red Sox fare with the Yankees?
In my contracted heart Jennifer died
a thousand times. As I watched her alive,
I held her dying. Again and again,
I looked covertly at the small bandage
over the smooth skin I kissed so often
while we made love and I nuzzled her neck—
the skin swollen, with its row of stitches
like a zipper—and I trembled, dreading
that a black cell divided and split there.
In self-pity I watched the widower
weep by her grave: lamenting, lamented.
Sometimes a manager in a tight game
brings in a new relief pitcher for each
batter, two or three in a row—left, right,
left; meanwhile the other team’s manager
answers with his pinch hitters—right, left, right—
after each pitcher faces one batter
until somebody runs out of bodies
on the bench or arms in the bullpen. Kurt,
do you know what a bench is? a bullpen?
Pathology telephoned its words: "a
muco-epidermoid carcinoma,
the size of a grape, intermediate
in virulence, encapsulated in
the membrane of the salivary gland"—
with no likelihood of metastasis
and little for recurrence. Next morning,
we woke alert in the pink-and-green dawn,
aware of joy at waking for the first
morning in weeks, in blissful consciousness
cherishing the settlement of the day:
Routine was paradise—walking the dog,
newspaper, coffee, love, rye toast, work, grape
juice, the Yankees beaten three straight, Cleveland
coming to town for four, a big series.