What could have been? By David L Painter

It was not so much as to who he was
but what he might have been.
Somehow the time seemed to have slipped by
until thirty  years had passed.
Years of rising
each morning clenching a black lunch pail
spending ten hours down in the steel mill
only to return at the end of the day 

When he was Twenty two
and much to his surprise,
that girl with auburn hair and big doe eyes said yes.
Still it wasn’t too late, he had played
the game all his life
from little league to high school.
Everyone said that he had a
good glove and a decent stick.
He had been offered a chance to play
down Tupelo way, minor AA.
It won’t be long he told his young wife,
but he just had to take the chance.

 However as dreams sometimes do,
they go by the way of a
headfirst slide into home plate
as the ump calls “You’re out.”
And the dust settles over
the rest of his life.

That two hundred a week
wasn’t enough with a baby on the way.
He could always play another day.
After all, everyone says that he had
a good glove and a decent stick.

Saturday night in front of the T V screen
as the flicker of black and white
dancing across his face,
perhaps down by the ocean where the
water washes him clean,
or at the corner bar where the foam
slides down his empty glass.
Maybe it’s the cry of a new born child and
the laugh of a happy wife.
Still in all, the question remains
What if ? If only.
Everyone said that he had a good glove and a decent stick.

David is an International published poet.He is a member of the Inner city writers’ group and penned in the city.His works have been published in Sweetycat Press,Piker press, Rye Whiskey Review,Clarendon House, Spillwords Press,The Writers’ Club,and  Dyst Literary Journal.as well as The World  of Myth,Every Writer,Ohio Bards and Academy of the Heart. He is a member of Ohio Writers Group and West Virginia Writers Group. His book of poems Thoughts Alone the Way  is available on Amazon