ODE TO PEDRO
I was never a baseball fan,
Not really.
So how did it happen that the
Closest, dearest friend
Of my life
Was a prodigy who
Made it to the Show
And lingered there for only
A few years
Before bailing—missing the revivifying succor
Of family and friends.
Of course, it was later—much later—
That I would meet Pedro,
When he wandered into my office
Announcing: he wished
To be my Deputy Director.
Hmm. I ran a schools program
For the City of New York,
The part that watched over housing
And the people who sheltered there,
Directing a learning program for kids
From kindergarten on up
One that taught youngsters about
Rent and the law and the courts and economics and
Cockroaches and vermin and lead poisoning
And garbage disposal
And community gardens and
Keeping safe and clean and wise
In households that loved them.
And who was this guy, again?
A baseball player? Who’d pitched
And hit and run for the Braves
And the Giants?
Well, to be sure, he’d also been electrician and
property manager
and I had my own peculiar trajectory:
a college professor in
Russian history, a poet, a novelist, a short story
writer—What was I doing in this particular slot,
running a program about housing?
Whatever the case,
these opposites met and, in a
Few years of work together
Forged a bond that lasted
Until Pedro died.
And long afterwards,
which is to say
Until this very moment.