Tag: #StoriesEmergeLikeBears
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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…
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TEAM FLAME, A Hermit Crab Essay in a baseball lineup card
Nine at bats. BATTING FIFTH Number 77, Third Base, DESERT DUST (Coaches note: all hit or miss, takes a big swing) Sitting on rocks, I recalled Gary Snyder’s line: “The closer you get to real matter — rock, air, fire, wood — the more spiritual the world is.” Under the tree and above the hard…
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TEAM FLAME, A Hermit Crab Essay in a baseball lineup card
Nine at bats BATTING CLEANUP Number 14, First Base, Antelope Ranch (Coaches note: power and contact) Motorcycling headlong into July’s hot wind, I was nearly there when I turned onto a dirt road and rumbled fifteen miles over boulders and ditches strewn with whitewashed bones: antelope skeletons, scattered ribs, skulls bleached by sun. I was…
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TEAM FLAME, A Hermit Crab Essay in a baseball lineup card
Nine at bats BATTING THIRD Number 5, Third Base, Coal (Coaches note: the best hitter) In the lineup’s three hole, the hitter must have power and make contact. In the summer season of my life, when I was full of velocity and ambition, I was that power aiming for contact whenever heat met me and…
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TEAM FLAME, A Hermit Crab Essay in a Lineup Card
Nine at bats BATTING SECOND Number 4, Short Stop, Asphalt (Coaches note: the fastest runner) On desert rides heat is built into the asphalt like a burning memory. In the desert’s hot waves, I recall Midwest summers when ball fields baked under August suns and my heart learned how quickly it could burn and how…
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TEAM FLAME, a Hermit Crab Essay in a baseball lineup card
The prophets received pillars of fire; Moses the eternal flame. I only get UV warnings and dehydration. But revelation always begins in these emptying’s and abrasions, so voided and cut, I’ll aim for the pitch when it comes in hot and burning. That’s what team flame does, we’re nine batters chasing heat.
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TEAM FLAME, A Hermit Crab Essay in a Baseball Lineup Card
A Hermit Crab Essay, Nine At-Bats in a Lineup Card Pregame Notes, Game One. Some batters arrive at the plate carrying heft. Some bring grace. Some survive enough innings to become myth. They’re all here and part of Team Flame. Nine batters in burnings and meditations, spirits and fires, spectacles and labors, longings and memories.…
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What Does a Loon Sound Like at Night?
A loon sound at night is not exactly terror, and not fright in the ordinary sense. But it is the feeling you get when the hairs on the back of your neck rise suddenly while resting in darkness on a northern lake. Something ancient speaks and we respond. If you have ever slept near a…
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SAGA OF A LOVE AFFAIR WITH RADIO
WOJB in smoky voice and guitar. The radio was on in my childhood home, always. A radio keeps songs alive long after they’re hits. I was two years old when Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song climbed the charts, but my hometown station played it for years until it lodged in my mind. Belafonte’s energetic tenor…
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Sounds Older than Sitar
Pulling the cord to start the Evinrude nothing happens. I pull again, and again, nothing. The sound of its cough, a serious protest, carries across the lake in a way that seems older than the sitar.