Not only a slugger

i show promise like a young almond grove
got more nuts than squirrels have ever lost
now become trees, which became
the house you grew up in.

hello child, i surround you, more house than you,
your mother's blouse is blue & green & her
breasts are large now, with milk, become
ivy, become something spilled but not upset.

have you ever found time, she asked, and i
said, for what? but she demurred, repeating,
have you ever found time?
the question lay there like a virgin on her back
after thinking it over i had to reply: yes,

once. it was in a pigpen when i was ten and
i was sitting in the living room. Charlotte's Web
on the television. and this, quick critic, explains
my mastery of the duplicitous: one time,

long ago, we believed in that magic. E. B. White.
T. V. Piano. somebody else's eyeballs. Babe was
not only a slugger.