Ninth Inning

He woke up in New York City on Valentine's Day, Speeding. The body in the booth next to his was still warm, Was gone. He had bought her a sweater, a box of chocolate Said her life wasn't working he looked stricken she said You're all bent out of shape, accusingly, and when he She went from being an Ivy League professor of French To an illustrator for a slick midtown magazine They agreed it was his fault. But for now they needed To sharpen to a point like a pencil the way The Empire State Building does. What I really want to say To you, my love, is a whisper on the rooftop lost in the wind And you turn to me with your rally cap on backwards rooting For a big inning, the bases loaded, our best slugger up And no one out, but it doesn't work that way. Like the time Kirk Gibson hit the homer off Dennis Eckersley to win the game: It doesn't happen like that in fiction. In fiction, we are On a train, listening to a storyteller about to reach the climax Of his tale as the train pulls into Minsk, his stop. That's My stop, he says, stepping off the train, confounding us who Can't get off it. "You can't leave without telling us the end," We say, but he is already on the platform, grinning. "End?" he says. "It was only the beginning."