Crawfords Blues

I. Elysian

If Hoboken was the other world
and that open space out of town,
lined with summer leaf red oaks
and lost time taverns,

was a field, cut grass cool in ’45,
then Chadwick’s revelation
of the diversion of the nation
was codified gospel.

There were no fences in heaven but
not all God’s children could play.
There were no tickets taken,
no greenbacks exchanged.

But, in the new world dirt
and civil-settled blood,
surely angels shagged flies
into the dawn.

II. Satchel

Momma’s bible can’t rightly recall the year
you dropped into this here world’s catcher’s mitt,
and it made you
always ageless, prone to hurry up, hesitate, never fear
some bigger man on deck. You threw batters into fits
with something borrowed, something new.

You jangled around, toed the rubber, cheated fate,
heaved a midnight rider toward the plate.
As a second class immortal,
you bedded down the white women in a cheap hotel
like a dancing changeup, a dangerous hanging curve,
dropping a slider with little nerve.

Your two hump blooper and four-day creeper,
hooked the snidest fans. They offered a clap and an ear
to what wise-old-you knew
when you said steer clear the fried meats, be a sleeper,
and never ever look back out of fear—
somethin might be gainin on you.

III. Black Babe Ruth

Your elegy should simply sing one note—almost.
At six foot one almost 256 pounds,
you’d squat and swat
and wait for Satchel’s Bee Ball or Little Tom to coast
in while he’d flash an almost grin from the mound.
You caught

more than junkballs and heaters. Myths and tall
tales stuck to you like gum on a shoe.
They say
you hit one past the Pittsburgh twilight, past the dipping sun,
and that Mr. Spalding didn’t decide to fall
until the very next day,

miles away in Washington where they finally called you out.
Your almost 800 home runs and the shot out of Yankee
stadium should leave little doubt—
then a tumor struck and you swung for the bottle, not surgery.
What almost could have been if you could have stayed,
gone three months before Jackie played.

IV. Cool Papa

Satch said you made Jesse Owens look like he
was walking, said you could flip the switch and be
in bed before
the cold dark dropped. You were one of three
to roam the outfield grass at Greenlee.
In center you made it seem like four.

Heard say once you scored from first on a bunt, and that
another time you were plugged by your own line
drive, called out,
as you slid into second. Still another claims from crack bat
go, you rounded the sacks in only 12 seconds, ignoring the sign
to slide without

a glint, a glimmer, a grin, a second thought stop.
Surely were someone’s cool papa, surely were.
Eyes fixed on home, whose
game were you playing? Who were you trying to top?
A white flash in the majors or that pesky Jim Crow blur?
Your sweet slide alone could fill this blues.

V. Greenlee

On Bedford Avenue between Chauncy and Duff
at the crossroads of a new new world,
the park rose concrete proud
in Pittsburgh steel

in the Hill, past buzzing barbershops
and jumping juke joints—
paid in full by Gus himself
whose numbers running made him bucks

that bought him dapper suits
that made him a mister on the city street.
No Forbes Field brick or centerfield flag pole,
no Union Park or Ammon Field by the Alleghenie,

just an all black cathedral,
ringing sacred harmonies
of dingers and shoestring catches
with God himself chomping peanuts in the stands.