HIS BASEBALL CARDS

He collected baseball cards

like they were shining silver dollars.

He carried them carefully

in his front pockets.

He felt wealthy with his cards --

his Musial, his mint-condition Mays,

and especially his Slaughter,

a card that kids would kill for.

He liked to sit

beneath the flourishing sweetgum tree

and talk to his cards:

Say hey, Willie.

Pound one over the pavilion, Stan.

Enos, show me how

to hustle from first to home

on just a single.

Those days he strode down Lockwood

like a prosperous person.