The Obligatory Poem About Baseball, and Fathers, and All That Becoming-a-Man Bullshit (or, Trying to Explain to Myself Why I Did Not Lose My Virginity Until I Was Well Into My Twenties)

On bright summer nights as a child,

I played catch with my father, 
both of us bathed in a milky wash of moonlight. 
I understood, even at that young age, 
that the glove was a kind of 
substitute vulva,

its fragrant leather enveloping

my pale, tender fingertips.

Puffing with exertion, and shining with sweat, 
my flaccid old man 
would gently lob the ball 
in my general direction

and I would stretch to enfold 
that hard round missile

in the pocket of supple flesh, 
before hurling it back to its place of origin

where it would drill into his mitt

with a satisfying smack. His palm

would be red for days afterward.

We only ever played catch,

neither of us having any idea 
what a man was supposed to do

with such a heavy, unwieldy thing

as a bat.