Ghost Runners

I won't try to explain wiffleball to those who don't already know the game, except to say it's a form of baseball that can be played in smaller spaces since the plastic, perforated ball does not travel as far.

    Ghost Runners

would take our place on base
those backyard August evenings
in our 4-on-4 wiffleball games
and if our turn to bat came round again
it was up to us to drive our own spirit
in with sacrifice, single, or suicide squeeze
(and to argue our phantom twin had surely
slid safely in to score) – and those who tried
too hard to homer would always whiff and leave
our young selves to die in the summer dusk on third
as our parents called to us, so close and so far from home.

Unfinished Business

This is about not quite achieving a goal, but I'm afraid the title may also refer to the present state of the poem as well.

   Unfinished Business

The wind gently wrinkles the lake’s calm waters,
quilting the swells from an unseen power
boat that passed this way at dawn
which now cause my kayak to rise and fall.

Behind me I hear a faint shushing sound
as if a distant steamboat were bearing down
on me, but I’m no Huck Finn; it’s just
the rubbing of my own life vest.

My sights are set on the other shore; then the clock
tower strikes the hour too soon, and I turn
back, my journey only half-complete.
Nothing rides my modest wake.