Kevin Durkin
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Little League
The world is independent of my will.
—Wittgenstein
I hit the ball. It didn’t move.
I swung again, a harder swing.
The handle cracked, the impact’s sting
radiated down my arm.
Suspended in the muggy air,
not spinning, every thread in place
and bright as blood, the shining white
planet stared me in the face.
Refusing to be orbital
or give in to the natural law
of gravity, it held in awe
players, coaches, parents. Still
the scoreboard shows the score is tied.
No cars have left the parking lot.
The outfield grass has never grown
since I have let the handle drop.
Orphan in Her 93rd Year
All night she leaves her light on, and her glasses,
but stays in bed. Her feet, she says, are cold.
Her fingers twitch the edges of the blankets
tugged to her chin. She fumblingly takes hold
of my hand, thanks me twice for being patient,
and quotes, like prayer, her favorite line of Burns.
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie . . . she whispers
but can’t recall the rest of his concerns.
O wad some Pow’r the giftie . . . is repeated
before she wipes the moisture from her eye—
the milky one. The blue one turns to see if
the window’s dark. She doesn’t ask me why
I’ve come so late or how I’ve spent the evening
or whom I’ve seen. She only smiles and sleeps.
Perhaps her mother, come at last, is lifting
an infant daughter in her arms for keeps.
"Little League" originally appeared in the April 1998 issue of The Yale Review (Volume 86, No. 2). "Orphan in Her 93rd Year" originally appeared in the Fall/Winter 1995 issue of Hellas (Volume 6, No. 2).
Bio
Kevin Durkin lives in Santa Monica and is a director of communications at the University of Southern California. His poems have appeared in The New Criterion, Poetry, The Yale Review, and elsewhere.