Brown-Bag Popcorn & the Chemung’s Song
Down in Elmira, where the Chemung flows,
Where the summer light freckles your elbows and nose,
We’d head to Dunn Field with a laugh and a hop -
Because summer began when the Pioneers took the top.
Popcorn…Mom’s ritual, buttery and bold,
Salted and shaken in brown bags that could hold
A whole season of joy, the hush before plays,
The warmth of her hand, and the smell of the maize.
We’d lug them along past the ticket-line heat,
Past the man with the mustard and dogs on his beat,
Into the glow of the Friday night air -
Where the town came to breathe and remember itself there.
The crack of the bat was the town’s small thunder,
The cheer rolled up like a hymn of wonder.
And the Chemung, just beyond the right-field wall,
Hummed like a secret only we could recall.
The crowd was a patchwork of laughter and names -
Neighbors stitched tight by the nearness of games;
Anthony’s voice, Maria’s grin,
The world felt wide and held us in.
It was the seventies - hair long and wild,
The decade’s swagger, the dream of a child.
Reggie and Rose had the majors in hand,
But we had a river, a field, a stand.
Then, in that hum, came my father’s call -
The voice that cut through it all:
“Let’s beat the traffic - time to go.”
Said like always, calm and low.
But something that night refused to obey;
I stayed watching the diamond, fading to gray,
And knew, somehow, that leaving early
Was how the world lets go too surely.
The crowd behind us clapped and roared,
The lights hummed on, the field restored,
And I, half-turned, with popcorn in hand,
Felt the ache of not quite understanding.
Years later, the Chemung still sings,
A river of innings and unclaimed things.
The lights have dimmed, the rafters rust,
The bleachers flake their paint and dust.
But sometimes, when the dusk leans low,
And a far-off crowd begins to grow,
I hear a bat connect - one clean sound -
And time, for a breath, stops spinning around.
Then all returns: the butter, the cheer,
The bench’s press, the summer near -
And Dunn Field rises, clear as day,
Where we never quite left,
but couldn’t quite stay.
GBS
1999
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