If I were to write a poem

If I were going to write a poem, it would have to have coffee in it. Coffee is the prime morning mover. It's the Alpha. It's another word for mojo. A poem would start with coffee, for sure.

And speaking about mojo, a poem I wrote would have to have Muddy Waters. His mojo working has been tickling my eardrums and soul, rocking them like they were in a hammock.

If I were going to write a poem, it should have a hammock in it, absolutely. It's the spring breeze and warm sunshine on the skin season of hammocks. It would also have to include some cut grass. Maybe cutting grass, with some reference to pull-starting the lawnmower for the first time in the spring--that rite of passage, requiring faith, luck and extra elbow grease to wake the mower from its seasonal slumber.

Hammocks, though a present-day obsession, are also a remembering back yards past--getting dumped from our hammock as a kid and getting the wind knocked out of me for the first time. Another way to get brained was playing on the monkey bars.

If I were to write a poem it would have to have monkey bars. Both the kind you played on and the book by Matthew Lippman, which is the kind you play in. Because I saw that today was Lippman's birthday and picked up "Monkey Bars," and it made me think, this is the kind of shit I need to spend my time reading, and re-reading, and writing.

That poem would have to include the Nationals because it is spring training and we're a buzz with the Nats, with tickets for Davey Johnson's boys' home opener against the Reds. When I'm rocking my Nats hat and see the Curly W in the rear view mirror taking the girls to school, it curls a soul smile.

If I were to write a poem today, it would have to include running, since we've had a return to spring running and racing and the Rise Up Runners. It would have to include longboard skateboarding, with the girls and the dogs around the neighborhood and the sound the wheels make cruising on the road.

A poem would have to include pale ale and cherry blossoms, the Bay Bridge and the D.C. waterfront. It would have to include dock bars and mulch and Langston Hughes writing down the blues in verse.

Man, that's a lot of stuff. If I were to write a poem this morning I'd have to unpack my consciousness, empty out my mind into words I haven't thought about yet and hope it comes across. Yeah. Sure glad I'm not writing a poem this morning.

Doug DeCinces had an indestructible mustache

It was probably my most prized possession from childhood. The 1980 Topps Eddie Murray card (from the 1979 season). It was the first year I really dialed in on collecting baseball cards. Being my favorite player, he wound up being the most elusive.

Billy, the kid that lived two doors down from my grandparents in Towson, was the first person I knew that had the card. No matter how I reasoned with him, he wouldn't take a two-for-one trade for Mark Belanger and Rich Dauer, the Orioles shortstop and second baseman. He really didn't understand how much more I wanted the Murray card than he did.

I remember sitting down in McCrory's Five and Dime on Washington Street in Easton, in the baseball card section, pouring over the clear three-packs of cards, looking to see which packs had the most visible Orioles. Mike Flanagan, Lee May, Doug DeCinces. It felt like by having their baseball cards and going to games or watching on TV, you somehow knew the players. DeCinces had an indestructible mustache in his earlier Orioles days. It was Magnum P.I. cool. I remember when he shaved it off.

Josh Wilker gets all this and then some. His book Cardboard Gods: An All-American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards took me instantly back to McCrorys; back to organizing baseball cards; to going to games at Memorial Stadium; to watching on TV as Rickey Henderson break Lou Brock's single season stolen base record of 118 stolen bases in 1982, and then looking for his card that proved that fact the next year. I wasn't an Oakland A's fan, but for some reason watching that game on TV stands out in my head.

Wilker's book is as much about life-existence-childhood and throwing himself headlong into baseball cards as a normalizing force. I give Cardboard Gods and its reconnecting me to that place and time, part of the credit for getting me so amped for the upcoming baseball season. Wilker, along with Buck Showalter and the Orioles front office, and 105.7FM "The Fan" and driving by Nationals Stadium every day, as we've mentioned before.

That and it seems as if the O's are bringing back facial hair to some degree. And this bearded guy says, "Play ball!" And wipe your chin off, for crissakes...

Different bubbles, same hot tub...

Lately it's been the differences that stand out.

With the weather changing, the warm short-sleeved days vs. the frost-on-the-windshield sweatshirt days.

It's the differences in the personalities and ages of our girls.

Mornings, it's the physicality of a running or gym morning vs. the mind-heart connection of a kicked-back, cross-legged writing morning.

As a morning run moves on it's the pace and grace of the fast bastard Rise Up Runners vs. the slug-it-out strides of the rest of us.

On the palette it's the hoppiness of an IPA vs. the ease of a pilsner.

For evening TV entertainment it's the differences between True Blood and Twilight.

With baseball season primed to play ball it's the hopefuls vs. try-again-next year's.

Daylight Savings has highlighted the light vs. dark mornings.

As evidenced all over the media and Facebook posts and beyond, it's the reaction to the health care bill and those who think health care is a free market commodity and those who think it should be a public service like education.

It's hacking off branches and at the same time watching new growth sprout--the difference between green and brown on the landscape.

Morning coffee or grown-up time in the evening, it's the ways in which Robin and I approach things differently.

And what I think is that difference is a gift. That fall and spring are two times each year when, for various reasons and in various ways, those differences take center stage.

I think I do well when I recognize differences and smile at them. I think some of my best days are a celebration of both existential and surface diversity. Especially, and soaking in the hot tub of paradox, in that it's through these seeming differences that the similarities and commonalities come again to the surface and speak their truths of how they all stream together--different bubbles from the same jets, spinning in circles of the same water. How's that for a Monday morning metaphor? ;)

A gift this morning, the next two pages of my notebook, which Anna had borrowed to draw in on random pages some time ago in the backseat while we were driving.