Scrap Dog 27
When a nearly 79 year old man
Dies with a .26 blood alcohol level,
The angels of the old country
Swoop down to carry him high
Above the fir trees and the hills
Over the mini-mansions
And the condo riddled ski slopes
Past the eagle nests
And caves full of wintering bears.
Having sparred with indifferent
Doctors, callous insurance providers,
Having shed abandonment
And heartlessness,
Having opted for vodka
To wrestle misdiagnosis,
Looking one more time
Across the cabin deck
Into the darkness
Where the angels
Dangled their legs
From the roof of the sky.
About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature, Tim Peeler has also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.
More By Tim Peeler:
Ballers 2, the Star’s Monologue 3
Image Credit: Carleton Watkins “Solar Eclipse” (1889) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.
As It Ought To Be 