During National Poetry Month I'll post a poem a day. These are mostly older poems of mine but there will be some new ones as well I promise. Since today is also the beginning of the Colorado Rockies baseball season I've chosen this one:
This is the Moment
There were at least a thousand different moments that day
August 13th 1971, my thirteenth birthday.
It’s not the long line of baseball fans
on a hot afternoon
winding their way up the ramps
circling Three Rivers Stadium like a python preparing for dinner.
It’s not the grey concrete walkway
speckled and spattered with
chewing gum
cigarette butts
beer stains
and something that might have been food.
Not even the sudden rush of fans pushing together
as the clubhouse door swung open
and like baseball cards come to life,
two Pirates emerged to sign autographs.
It might have been the face
of Roberto Clemente
granite features
with blazing eyes that met my own for an eternal moment
but then
maybe not even that.
It was, however,
the feeling of my feet leaving the floor
and my father’s hands
as he lifted me above the crowd
and his voice
younger than I had ever heard
saying
“There he is!, the great one!”
That was the moment.
That is the moment.