By Eric Weil
As a kid, I’d sneak clothespins
from the bag on the line
strung with shirts and sheets,
clip baseball cards
to rear bike-fender struts
for the high-horsepower racket
they made in the spokes
as I raced friends up the street
to our baseball field: four
unfenced back yards, a garage
like Fenway’s Green Monster
for our left field wall.
Years later among relics
of the greatest players, I realized
I’d spun gold into card stock
in the sunshine of youth,
but there’s no price I can place
on remembering the ball
barely clearing the garage
that first time, the sound
of speed all the way home.
About the Author:
Eric Weil lives in Raleigh, NC. Journals ranging from American Scholar to Poetry, from Main Street Rag to Silk Road, and from Dead Mule to Sow’s Ear have published his poems. Recent poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming in, North Coast Voices, Dunes Review, Brillig, and Kakalak 2025. He has three chapbooks in print.