Left Handed Glove

Left Handed Glove

Taking a deep breath and walking back from what I had done, I sit down and sob in my own misery. It was raining both inside and outside, my hand was dripping blood and the sky was falling apart- so was I. Matt was only eleven! He was smart, athletic, funny and friendly… why is it only a tan, worn, old, and used mitt that I get to keep from him, why? I remember walking into his dark room one night after eating some crunchy New York pizza, he had the glove in front of him and a green pen clasped into his left hand. “What are you doing, Matt?” I asked him. He did not answer me back; he just lifted a large book titled “Famous Authors and Poems”. I walked over to him and looked at the mitt that was once Frank Colman’s, he was a New York outfielder for the 1946 New York Yankees team. I got the mitt from him when he was signing autographs at a sporting goods store. Matt had used green ink to write over the fingers and the pocket of the mitt, he was writing down his favorite poems on it.

“Why are you doing this?” I grabbed his shoulders and looked down into the mitt.

“I get pretty bored when no one is batting. So I decided it would be better if I had something to read instead of just standing there in the blazing sun,” I remembered him say.

Unfortunately, death has taken Matt from me; I still have a hole in my heart, one I will never be able to seal as long as I live. He died from leukemia when we were visiting up at Maine on the summer of 1946, the 8^th of July. Even though he was two years younger than me, he was many times smarter than I was. Teachers would write my mom home saying how nice it was to have him in class, that’s how smart he was. So they say that people with redhead get mad often but no, he never got mad at anyone. Actually, he was the nicest member in my family. The mitt was his most valued possession; I think he would have wanted for me to keep it. He never told me why he had written this specific poem called “Bond and Free” by Robert Frost right in the middle of the glove, the poem went like this:

Love has earth to which she clings 

With hills and circling arms about— 

Wall within wall to shut fear out. 

But Thought has need of no such things, 

For Thought has a pair of dauntless wings.

 

On snow and sand and turf, I see 

Where Love has left a printed trace 

With straining in the world’s embrace. 

And such is Love and glad to be. 

But Thought has shaken his ankles free.

 

Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom 

And sits in Sirius’ disc all night, 

Till day makes him retrace his flight, 

With smell of burning on every plume, 

Back past the sun to an earthly room.

 

His gains in heaven are what they are. 

Yet some say Love by being thrall 

And simply staying possesses all 

In several beauty that Thought fares far 

To find fused in another star.”

I can only guess this was his favorite poem, since I could definitely see his lips moving to the words of the poem as we played catch or fooled around. I take the mitt everywhere I can, it makes me feel closer to the memories I still hold of Matt. Whenever I look at it I don’t put it on, it makes me feel like it doesn’t belong to me in some way but I still don’t think Frank Colman’s glove will fit my hand when I stand at 6’2 and Frank stands at 5’11 according to my baseball card. Even though its being three years from his death now, I still feel like I just got the news from his death… devastated, as if something was ripped away from me. The only thing that makes me feel better is the old mitt; he used to play with it every day at the ball park whenever it was not raining, surprisingly the green ink would not wash away, not even to this day.