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It is almost the color of summer-scorched desert dirt,
and it stands behind the backstop:
"Clarence Fieber Memorial Bench", it reads.  

 It ought to be a milking stool.

Clarence was a Wisconsin dairy farmer
whose home was always in Wisconsin
but who moved to Tucson for Adeline
and their daughters and the dry desert air.
"Sweet Adeline!", he would sing.

 What does a young dairy farmer do in Tucson?
He milks cows for the University
and he plays baseball.  If he is from Wisconsin,
he puts a mooing cow horn on his pickup,
not for everyday use, but for special occasions
when something dairy-barn comes to mind.

 It should have been a milking stool,
not because he did not deserve a bench
but for the sheer, surprising sight of it,
something like a dairy farmer at the University,
or a ninety-year old baseball player
who left what he loved forever
for those he loved even more.

 And that is why there is a bench
behind the backstop
at the Udall Recreation Center, 
for the kind of man we're glad we knew.

 "Back home," Clarence would say. . . .

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