Kids Day at the ballpark,
all in various states of undress,
clothes tangentially hanging on
to various parts of their bodies.
By accident, I am sitting in
the same section as my alma mater,
the high school I attended in the 60s,
the high school I taught in for overt 30 years.
I talk to students who were born
AFTER I had retired which made me feel
very old indeed. Students came from the
“stans,” Uzbekistan and the like,
whose accented English was delightful.
But it was I who was the foreigner.
Who remembers the lessons I taught,
the students I instructed?
All erased clean like chalk
on a blackboard.
(Who remembers blackboards?)
My own students are parents now,
and their kids ask them about
the old days of high school.
So, students and baseball march on,
linked to the chain of history.
That is what I’m thinking as the
as innings progress to the 9th
with the new immigrant kids
wildly cheering the American game.