At the Pitch • Poetry Wednesday

At the Pitch If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness, Eberhart wrote but there was his wife Betty hanging onto his coattails for dear life to the end of her life. No one intervened when my mother’s brother’s wife ran off with the new young rabbi every woman in the congregation had a crush on. They rose unleashed, fleeing west into the sooty sky over Philadelphia in a pillar of fire, at the pitch that is near madness touching down in the outskirts of Pittsburgh. Cleveland. Chicago. O westward! O fornication! I was sixteen. Eberhart had written his poem before he sailed off to World War II and a boy had just put his tongue in my mouth which meant he could make me do anything. No one holding onto his coattails, no one onto my skirt until my father switched on the back porch light. by Maxine Kumin from Where I Live: New & Selected Poems courtesy The Writer's Almanac