Brian Turner
Instant Replay
The ruling on the field has been challenged
and now the crew in New York studies
the moment in slo-mo, nearly frame by frame,
the bang-bang play a difference
of milliseconds, camera angles, a decision
on when the ball enters the glove.
History will be surprised by its own error
should the call be reversed, the runner
staying on the bag or dusting himself off
as he walks on back into the dugout.
It’s all about timing. The perception of bodies
in motion. Everything unfolding from this.
And as I watch the game and wait for the call
from New York, I think of the two of us
curled up lazy in a Saturday afternoon bed,
your head on my chest, our conversations
about the multiverse, the many variations of us
out there, the things we do, the things we see.
But now that you’re gone, it’s become so clear
that the difference between two versions
of the same moment is you, though I keep trying,
frame by frame, to slow this gathering of years,
to reverse them into a stillness that might return us
to one another, the clouds forming above, then
reforming, the departed returning to this life
on their deathbeds with their loved ones
there to greet them, as I am for you, the word after
transposed into the word now, the word love
made sweeter in its return, the word death
transformed, finally, finally, into a gift.
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