Thoughts from a Royal poet.

Dan Quisenberry pitched in two World Series. He invented the submarine sinkerball. He was the most devastating closer in the American League for some of the greatest Royals teams in history. In 1998 he was the 15th person and the first relief pitcher inducted into the Royals Hall of Fame. The Quiz is a Kansas City legend.

And yet I love the man for his words.

After he retired, Dan Quisenberry started writing. I still don't know why he didn't start earlier. His poems on baseball, his battle with brain cancer and sunny Sunday afternoons touch me in a way that poetry never has. They truly inspire and enrapture me.

Here are some of my favorites.

Old (G)love

mushy leather
burnt brown
light cracks
saddle creaks
your strings held up well
mine have too
we look trim enough
to still play

you protected me
Wilson A2000 XL
only glove I really liked
though I flirted with others
you were the one for me
I love your dark center
your womb
rich as Iowa soil
tight feel to my left hand
a worker's glove
you brought slap shots
stinging in my palm
but I knew where they were
so I could grab them quick

now you look so small
do you shrink like old men
stiff and less flexible?

me too

we're both on the shelf
but you still look nice
and holding you
feels so right



Vicissitudes of Love

glancing at her husband
of twenty-nine years
his nose in the sports pages
she thinks
dosomethingsaysomethingbreathedammitIcan'ttakethis
anymorelife'swaytooshortIgottabebetterthan
boxscores

he drops the paper, says
"the redsox are out of it,
let's go to the hills and pick blueberries"
and she thinks
Iloveyousomuch



And finally, Vocations

my attourney said
"we've gotta get you a job"
"get some structure into your life"
oh, I see
but poetry doesn't grow
in concrete
or in straight black and white lines
and besides that
I don't think well with a suit on


I can't figure out which I would rather be: As skilled as the Quiz, or as inspired. I think probably the latter.