Fall 2013, Volume 15

Poetry by Patrick Haas

Field of Dreams

My father, when he came home from
war, he fell in love with jazz
and baseball. Who could blame him?
America’s favorite past time, men
hitting, spitting and throwing
each other out at home. But jazz
is another story. We listened
to Billie Holiday, a woman who sang
about a man swinging from a branch.
You could say all this talk of wood and men
is from the bible but you’d be wrong.
In Field of Dreams, everyone knows
the story, except the son. A father
returns to play in a field. Ease his pain
refrains, as men in uniforms return
from the corn to make errors
around a diamond. My father is always
fucking around in his photos
from Vietnam, sun sticking
diamonds of sweat to his skin
he can't wipe off, censored stenciled
on his green metal locker, love
stenciled on his green metal locker.
But he wasn't safe from the wind
in a war that blew agent orange
into his body like a box stuffed full
of strange fruit. In jazz, men play
trumpets like brass flowers growing
from their lips. You could say swing
you could say hit, you could say beat.
Could say her voice was sweet grass
swaying in the wind. But if you said
what’s lost comes back you’d be wrong.
Because men going into a field
will never really return, we know that 
they're going and going until they're gone.

 

 

 

BIO: Patrick Haas lives in Glendale, AZ and some of this other poems can be found at petri press and anomalous press.