TEAM FLAME, A Hermit Crab Essay in a Baseball Card

Nine At-Bats in a Lineup Card

BATTING SIXTH

Number 97, Center Field, SHAPESHIFTER

(Coaches note: the sneakiest batter in the lineup)

Walking behind him in New Delhi, he turned and laughed at me. His brown buttocks visible through threadbare pants, a thrush testing the limits of cover.

He turned into an alley. Fifteen seconds later I followed.

He was gone.

No doors.
No windows.
No exits.

A blackbird remained on the narrow asphalt corridor.

It cried once, lifted upward like a funeral in feathers, laughed again, then vanished.

I still do not know how.

In Diné land, the border of Utah and Arizona, grandfather became a roadrunner for his brown metamorphosis. I glimpsed him ducking behind a pinyon pine as he disappeared.

“Where did Grandfather go?” his granddaughter asked.
“I don’t know. He was just here,” Grandmother said.

I still do not know.

Tomorrow, batting seventh, number 12, Second base, False Fire

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^{Burning excerpts from Stories Emerge Like Bears, a Cornerstone Press forthcominglyric memoir in 2028 exploring wilderness, memory, labor, rhythm, motorcycles, drumming, fire, and the sacred atmospheres and languages of place.}