Spring Training

I carry my spikes and step on the field an hour ahead of the others. Last day of March with April offering tickets for the new season. I'm full of sun on wet grass, in love with blistered benches.A sparrow sits on the backstop, watching, ready to dart if I catch its eye. I drop my bag on home plate and swirl my foot in the dust the way my cousin does with his fingers on the skin of a drum head. Next yearhe'll be released with the others who spent mornings breaking windows and trashing vacation homes like drunks in the right field bleachers. Here, I'm alone with a sparrow and the smell of a baseball morningsettling around me like a comforter. I start trotting to first base, the ankles loosening, then the knees, as the dust begins to lift into the breaking light. Around second and third I stretch my armsin a rotary motion ready to fly. A hand waves back from a passing car, someone who knows me or remembers rising one morning when the game of who you are is played out in your mind,and around you a stadium full of fans begs youto do what you usually do in the clutch. The bat I pullfrom the bag for the first time is my father's Louisville Slugger, thirty-three inches, wood barrel.I thought enough time had passed, the attic dust hard in the grooves. I stroke it slowly like a weaponyou love to touch but would never use. He hit .304at Omaha the season he was drafted, all-starrookie-of-the-year. He said we'd join him soon.Then that other draft. He would have been here.I swear he would. The silence feels oppressive now.I dig for a scuffed ball and throw it up, shoulder high,but let it fall. A natural hitter, my father said, holdingmy hands. I grip the tar-stained handle. Tears blurthe wall that's so far away it looks warped. I aimfor marrow deep inside, April hungry for the kill.