The Bullpen Bar
What you have to understand
is the place where your father and I drank beer
when we were seventeen.
The Bullpen Bar was a worn-out building
on the edge of Sulfur City
where a handful of people drowned their nights.
It hung on a cliff overlooking the river.
One tree stood beside it,
flinging its crooked arms
over the bar roof on one side
and the Sasqwa River on the other.
We didn’t drink inside the bar,
but outside,
under the tree
with rough planks scratching our backs.
Sometimes, we’d climb down the cliff
and settle on our small spot of ground
hemmed in by sandstone and river.
Daniel would slip his hands
under my blouse
as we listened to the water slap
against the banks.
II
The night Kennedy was shot,
Daniel and I huddled
against icy, November rocks.
The moon was a half-ball in the sky.
I wore red cowboy boots.
Daniel wore his black leather.
“You can’t swim across it,” he taunted,
swallowing the last of his Bud.
He didn’t know that after Oswald
nothing was impossible.
III
I slipped into the beetle-black water,
sinking low and swimming hard.
When I surfaced,
I heard Daniel call.
I turned and found him
with water writhing
around his face
like a serpent.
Its thick scales caught the moonlight
And threw it back at me.
I tried to reach him as he wrestled,
but the water was seething.
When he disappeared,
I begged for more light,
begged for the strength to find him,
begged for the sound of his voice.
IV
You have to understand.
Tonight, we sit by an innocent fountain
and drink expensive wine
in this bar that isn’t anything
like the Bullpen.
At the Bullpen,
people didn’t sit close to a fountain pool,
so close they could see themselves in the water,
so close they could make a wish,
watch the pool swallow their coins,
and then just walk away.
