THE DAY I ALMOST WENT TO A NEW YORK YANKEE BASEBALL GAME

Sometimes life’s like that.
The ballpark was full, even the Bleachers,
so we ate Sweet Italian hot dogs
outside the Yankee Stadium, hearing
the crowd and the jingles
and the fanfares and the commentators
with their fill-ins covering all the usual bases.

We headed down to Brooklyn and took a D train
on to Coney Island, baby, the place that Lou Reed
sang about and which has always had
something of his Walk on the Wild Side
about it for me. We took a walk along the Boardwalk
and rode the nineteen-twenty-seven wooden roller
coaster, as rickety as a shack but twice as fast.
Up towards Brighton Beach and the talk’s
all Russian and the food’s all blinis and the drink’s
all ice-cold ice buckets with their pearlescent sides
holding bottles of Stolichnaya like white flags
in bars called Tatiana’s & Natasha’s.

The freak show’s one man,
two women and an albino six-foot python
who conjugate and recombine
in many Amazing and Novel ways.
There’s fire-eating, sword-swallowing
and arm-piercing, but even the man’s
beardless (I so want to see a bearded woman).

Out into the saturated air again, down
to the water’s edge. All life is here and crabs
and jellyfish lie prone to the gulls
that snap back to earth again and again
as if on elastic. The sun falls into the Atlantic
like a giant Ferris Wheel at precisely
six forty-five and the music and dancing
begin again at Tatiana’s and Natasha’s.
The gulls wheel and turn in a mazurka
to the sheer pleasure of flight. But
even they cannot leave this place.
All life is here except you.