The Commerce Comet
The Commerce Comet
Steven Pelcman
He came to us
From the Panhandle with the stink
Of prairie and zinc and lead
And the roaring winds
Of Route 66
With the open Oklahoma
Wide spaces filled with
Nothing but the sweat of farmers
And the dreams that fathers
Have for their sons.
Under the glaring sun
Where Native Indians had lived
For centuries, where Bonnie and Clyde
Had murdered, Mickey had lived
This small world in his father’s shadow
Destined to become a Baseball God,
With hands that gripped wood
And stroked baseballs
That travelled the distance
That children could only imagine.
Mantle waited in the New York shadows
Hearing the roars and screams
And the men standing in rows
And looking out across the field
And stands that were larger than
The mines and prairie grasses
He was born into, but smaller than what
The world expected of him. He walked
To the plate carrying New York
On his back, muscles bulging
He could feel his father’s hands on his,
Feel the weight of an Oklahoma sun,
Hear the voices of Ruth and Gehrig
And ‘Joltin’ Joe and hit a ball
That broke the darkness of sound.
In a world of war and confusion
He was more than a baseball player,
More than a reminder of the past,
He was the hope forgotten in a new age
When children still believed in heroes.
Steven Pelcman is an American writer of poetry and short stories who has been published in a number of magazines including: The Windsor Review, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Fourth River magazine, River Oak Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, the Tulane Review, The Baltimore Review, The Warwick Review, The Greensboro Review, etc. He was nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize for individual poems and received two additional nominations for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry book titled, The Confessions of a Dying Man, which covers many of the pre-, during, and post-WW2 family and others‘ experiences, is curated at The Institute for Jewish Research in NYC Feb 2022. He currently resides in Florida and his children reside in California and New Jersey.
Mark Mosley is a public school 7th grade math teacher. He draws baseball cards when he is not driving his son to baseball or his daughter to gymnastics. His cards can be seen on Twitter @mosley_mark, on Instagram @idrawbaseballcards, and can be purchased at https://idrawbaseballcards.bigcartel.com/
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