6794. THE RIGHT SIDE OF THIS MANSION

THE RIGHT SIDE 

OF THIS MANSION

I offer you the following perplexity : wise and wild,

stupendous and bold, the local boys played ball in the

alleyway, and behind them stretched a field. Others 

played there. Pick-up games of baseball, being replaced

somehow by organized games of cricket  -  Caribbean

immigrants  -  have pushed the baseball guys into the

smaller and smaller spaces. Things turn over like that.

On the other court, the black kids play basketball fiercely.

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And here I am, holding a pie-plate over another's head to

shield her from the rain. She hates the downpour, though

I rather enjoy the look of her hair when all wet and crazy.

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Everyone else has stopped their playing games and  -  running

all for cover  -  find themselves suddenly mingling but with

so little to say. It all amounts to an abracadabra of nothing.

The white guys are looking over the, mostly chubbier,

cricket guys in their whites. It's like anarchy versus

order in a peerage of self-inspection, each looking

at another and seeing, instead, their own self.

The black guys stare, sullenly, out at the rain.