Bleacher Ruminations

I’m sitting on aluminum bleachers behind the backstop of a ball field in a city park.

It’s a fine weekday morning. I am waiting for someone.

A kite is hung up in an oak tree.

A brown dog plays stick with its owner in center field.

Not a trace of lime in the batter’s boxes. It’s been close to 45 years since I stood in a limed batter’s box and faced a pitcher. What did I do in that final at bat? Did I realize it was going to be my final at bat? I think I did. Tennis was taking over.

Will anyone play organized ball on this field this summer?

I can see traffic on an Interstate Highway.

Contrails dissipate in the sky.

Squirrels dart here and there.

An empty school bus drives by.

A woman walks a husky mix. I wince. I miss my husky mix.

Lots of fine Doug firs in this park. Oak, Doug fir. What’s the difference? Everything, including the metaphors each species of tree offers.

To my right, two men clad in black practice some sort of martial art with sticks.

I’m thinking about a short story I started 14 years ago but stopped for a reason I no longer recall. I started it with my creative writing class and actually read part of it aloud to the students. They didn’t like it. I wrote about 750 words and it’s about a Black high school basketball player in rural Oregon who excels at shooting long distance shots off the backboard and becomes a legend. In fact, the story is called “Off The Glass.”

Some crows fly overhead.

A couple of bees are drinking from a water fountain.

Spring is here, but I don’t feel a spring in my step.