RELATIVES

If the nine of them were a baseball team

Aunt Sadie would be the wily pitcher

Shaking off the signs her mother gives

From the dugout. Her speedball, true, is

Nothing special, but her screwballs

And her deceptive curves break

At the last moment, gleefully arcing

Just within the strike zone’s corners

So the ball slams time after time

Into Aunt Doris’s glove. Sadie’s so good

The outfielders are bored. Uncle Joe

Seems asleep in right field; my father, in left,

Is carefully imagining a game to be played

Fifty years hence, unless it rains.