Poem For Ronnie Belliard

I was drinking canned tamarind milk
and watching baseball plays through the ages,
sluggish men who chaw and fume replaced
with glimmering gods in stark-white trousers.
The milk bit at my tongue.
The neighbor's weathervane crows a long white rasp of light.
Someone in sepia drifts paunchily home
to indifferent clouds albuminous over the diamond.
A little puff of dust some decades gone obscures the frame.
There are the pumpernickel bread uneaten
and unread Aeschylus to be accounted for.
A dozen cans serve as bells at my feet
when assaulted. A fraying kingdom sags
under my bum; something must be altered.
The new champion, holder of the world record,
flashes his lacquered self-conscious grin
while the fan on the big screen coos at herself behind him.
Everyone soon will shout their woe or adulation.
The bronze cockerel that rusts and moans
wheels its fanned tail heavily towards the sun.