It’s hot summer in the teeming city with tenements piled room-on-room. With narrow hallways and nonexistent grassy plots, where’s a kid to play?
Home Plate: Sweet Victory
They’re playing baseball in the street again, forcing cars to wait,
restless in the intersection, ’til they see the fate
of the ball the bat just cracked, rising in the air
to land in someone’s flower pot or on the tenement stair.
They make such a brouhaha, loud boys and louder cars,
that Grandma rises up a bit to clutch at window bars.
It is a large commitment, for she can’t sit down again
without some help, but still she is attracted by the din.
Are car horns blaring for the inconvenience or a homer?
The batter’s mad dash down the street and back a slight misnomer,
for first base is the red car and second base the yellow.
Cross the street and third base is the stair stoop of the fellow
who exits from his doorway, briefcase in his hand,
who seems in a great hurry and yet chooses to stand
to see the runner execute his skipping zigzag run
homeward toward the batter’s plate that holds a sticky bun.
Horns blaring as he executes his mission, ends his flight,
bends over, grabs his trophy, and takes his winning bite!
Prompt words today were play, intersection, commitment and brouhaha.
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/rdp-saturday-play/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/12/15/fowc-with-fandango-intersection/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/commitment/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/your-daily-word-prompt-brouhaha-December-15-2018/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Perfect visual
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Thanks, Rugby. I was thinking of NYC for the poem and the photo was in San Francisco, but oh well.
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Love this. It reminds me of street hockey up here in Canada.
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Wonder if kids still do that?
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Come to think of it, they do it all the time here in Mexico.
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Oh for sure! A Canadian tradition!
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This is wonderful!!! Very visceral and very evocative of innocent summer days.
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Thanks, Momshieb!!!
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Oh boy, that was fun 🙂
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;o)
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Looks like a lot of other people enjoyed your poem as much as I did. Great slice of childhood, served up with zest!
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