My Rawlings Glove

Elmira Summers and Faraway Lands

You see this glove?
Not much to look at now  -
Patched with shoestrings, leather dark and soft,
But slip it on, and listen…
Suddenly, Elmira’s streets are under my feet again.

Summers that smelled of dust and grass,
Stoops and alleys where we ran
Until the heat chased us home.
Every crease in this glove remembers
The pop of ball, the crack of wood,
The sun on a boy’s back who thought
He could catch the world.

And then it went with me  -
Forts Hood, Knox, Harrison,
Germany where frost bites teeth,
Saudi desert nights, Baghdad hush.
All that heat and cold and waiting -
This glove was there, quiet, familiar, steady.
It held me,
Even when I thought nothing else could.

No medal marks it.
No stat sheet tells its story.
But it’s full of something better:
The smell of oil and earth,
The feel of fingers finding their place,
The small, stubborn joy
Of something you can touch and know
Is yours, still.

Now it sits by my door.
I take it down sometimes,
Twist a lace, press my hand in -
And for a moment, it’s all back:
The boy, the man, the streets, the summers,
The nights far from home, the warmth of return.

And I think: this glove…
It’s more than leather.
It’s memory,
It’s time,
It’s the quiet proof
That life, lived well,
Keeps its shape.

GBS
2022