Liberty Park, 1924

She was seventeen

working late at the

department store

on Ohio street,

walking alone home

from the end

of the trolley line

across a darkened

Liberty Park when

all lit up like sunburst

in the winter bleakness

as hooded figures

stood defiantly silhouetted

circling around a flaming

glowing cross where

second base should

have been on the nearby

ball diamond, rally-starting

lined doubles into the gap

in happier warmer times  

long forgotten on this night,

the terror still in her

eyes sixty years later

as the story unwinds

like a fastball under her chin.