Greg McCulloch 1960-2009
Maybe in Heaven the Senators never left town
And Don Wert is in some angelic Hall of Fame –
Maybe beer bongs are preferred at poker games
And ping pong's de rigeur in the ballroom.
There's always a place for a good old boy
Who always stayed happy as a baby.
Dr. Pepper and a cigarette, a chip shot on the green,
What else is there to do but vanishing?
You laughed your way through the Levittown maze,
All heart, you lived larger than your brethren,
The puritans and intellectuals
With their stochiometric plots.
Like an honors hand, you emerged fully formed
From a bottle of Scotch on a bridge table
Somewhere in the tidelands of Virginia.
Was there anywhere to go from there?
I see you in the August summer vapor,
Refusing to be wounded, for you'd rather
Be a vagrant gentleman with a rumpled suit,
The glint of twilight in the last ice cube.
The tambourines in the magnolia trees
Cheer on more games at the end of the year,
For death never changes anything here,
The kids still play catch with the angels.
