Untitled
At most what we rent
Is time, read the deed,
The notarized history.
How many crazed humans
Have owned the giant rock
That broke the bush hog blade?
Yet here I am
Somehow,
Counting the nights
As they fall
Over glade and hill.
The I that is me
Stands on the second page
Of the deed
Above the smeared
Blue stamped date,
Reaching for
The ragged loops
Of my ghostly signature.
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.
Image Credit: David Bles “Man Writing” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
As It Ought To Be 