A Little Action

by Alan Shapiro

Without a bet on baseball, my father’s soul
and body were out of phase or focus
in a kind of split screen vision.  Only,
as he called it, “a little action on the side,”
sawbuck, ten spot, two bits or a penny,
with anyone really, man, woman, child,
even the family dog we didn’t have,
could catalyze the TV blizzard of his
inattention into near mystic clarity.
Sometimes to hone his edge, he’d go all in
with house, car, first born, and not just
on the macros of who would win, by how
much, in what way, but the micros too
of over/under in balls and strikes, pitch
count per game, per inning, if or how often
each batter would kick dirt, adjust helmet,
cup crotch or spit.  Drenched in consequence,
adrenaline enchanted, the universe that
otherwise never spoke his name
suddenly awoke to do or not do his
bidding, to place him in the transient
quicksilver center of winner or loser,
it didn’t matter which, so long as he
knew where and what he was.

Most of his life was lived “between bets,”
smiling without ever looking pleased; so
when he got old and retired from a job
selling men’s suits at Saks, and his eyes
began to fail, it was like he’d awakened
in a cloud chamber, a stone camera obscura,
staring at a mineral sky neither colorless
nor black nor white, adrift with cloud
hauntings, phantasms of action
only the newly dead might see; as if his life
now lived apart, in some other dimension
he didn’t know about, had never heard of,
couldn’t imagine ever having lived in, bound
as he was now to a recliner in front of a flat screen.