Baseball

It looks easy from a distance,
easy and lazy, even,
until you stand up to the plate
and see the fastball sailing inside,
an inch from your chin,
or circle in the outfield
straining to get a bead
on a small black dot
a city block or more high,
a dark star that could fall
on your head like a leaden meteor.

The grass, the dirt, the deadly hops
between your feet and overeager glove:
football can be learned,
and basketball finessed, but
there is no hiding from baseball
the fact that some are chosen
and some are not—those whose mitts
feel too left-handed,
who are scared at third base
of the pulled line drive,
and at first base are scared
of the shortstop’s wild throw
that stretches you out like a gutted deer.

There is nowhere to hide when the ball’s
spotlight swivels your way,
and the chatter around you falls still,
and the mothers on the sidelines,
your own among them, hold their breaths,
and you whiff on a terrible pitch
or in the infield achieve
something with the ball so
ridiculous you blush for years.
It’s easy to do. Baseball was
invented in America, where beneath
the good cheer and sly jazz the chance
of failure is everybody’s right,
beginning with baseball.

“Baseball” by John Updike

Driving home on July 3rd

At night on July 3rd, we drive home- the hum of the tires, the chit-chattering of children in their seats, the soap-colored clouds.  As we by-pass the stop signs of towns like Bucyrus, Crestline and Upper Sandusky, we see fireworks shimmer into the sky from front yards and high school football fields.  One of the few days of the year when the sun doesn’t set fast enough.  Children on front porches wait anxiously for dad to strike the match, hold it steady to the fuse and watch the streak into the darkness.  From the road, we also see the comet’s tail shiver upward- a pleasant distraction.

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The second poem that I have written.

A belated graduation poem

Over a tray of spent plates, I confessed
to the college president my plans to go East,
to New York, which I’d not really seen,
though it seemed the right place
for a sophomore as sullen and restless
as I had become on that merciless
Midwestern plain. He slowly stroked
a thick cup and described the nights
when, a theology teacher in Boston, he’d fly
a tiny plane alone out over the ocean,
each time pressing farther into the dark
until the last moment, when he’d turn
toward the coast’s bright spine, how he loved
the way the city glittered beneath him
as he glided gracefully toward it,
engine gasping, fuel needle dead on empty,
the way sweat dampened the back of his neck
when he climbed from the cockpit, giddy.
Buttoned up in my cardigan, young, willing
to lose everything, how could I see generosity
or warning? But now that I’m out here,
his advice comes so clear: fling yourself
farther, and a bit farther each time,
but darling, don’t drop.

“Flying Lesson” by Julia Kasdorf

Bums at Breakfast

Daily, the bums sat down to eat in our kitchen.
They seemed to be whatever the day was like:
If it was hot or cold, they were hot or cold;
If it was wet, they came in dripping wet.
One left his snowy shoes on the back porch
But his socks stuck to the clean linoleum,
And one, when my mother led him to the sink,
Wrung out his hat instead of washing his hands.

My father said they’d made a mark on the house,
A hobo’s sign on the sidewalk, pointing the way.
I hunted everywhere, but never found it.
It must have said, “It’s only good in the morning—
When the husband’s out.” My father knew by heart
Lectures on Thrift and Doggedness,
But he was always either working or sleeping.
My mother didn’t know any advice.

They ate their food politely, with old hands,
Not looking around, and spoke in short, plain answers.
Sometimes they said what they’d been doing lately
Or told us what was wrong; but listening hard,
I broke their language into secret codes:
Their east meant west, their job meant walking and walking,
Their money meant danger, home meant running and hiding,
Their father and mother were different kinds of weather.

Dumbly, I watched them leave by the back door,
Their pockets empty as a ten-year-old’s;
Yet they looked twice as rich, being full of breakfast.
I carried mine like a lump all the way to school.
When I was growing hungry, where would they be?
None ever came twice. Never to lunch or dinner.
They were always starting fresh in the fresh morning.
I dreamed of days that stopped at the beginning.

“Bums at Breakfast” by David Wagoner

A belated Father’s Day poem

Driving State Road 60 northwest out of Salem,

10 miles out—
and 10 before you come to Spring Mill Park—

off to your right—for just a blacktop minute—
is Campbellsburg,

which was a town
when the man you were named for had his store there,

but a glance through your window reveals it’s now gray abandonment—
ugly sag and fall.

And you wonder who lives there now
and how anyone
even to have a brick store all his own
ever could.

But nothing about it matters to you half as much as that your dad
came in from that hill farm to the north
to go to high school there.

And that’s what you always point out to whoever’s with you in the car.

And through the years what all your passengers have had in common is
no matter how you point it out
they can’t care enough.

“Campbellsburg” by Reid Bush

From a Bus Window in Central Ohio, Just Before a Thunder Shower

Cribs loaded with roughage huddle together
Before the north clouds.
The wind tiptoes between poplars.
The silver maple leaves squint
Toward the ground.
An old farmer, his scarlet face
Apologetic with whiskey, swings back a barn door
And calls a hundred black-and-white Holsteins
From the clover field.

James Wright

Why National Geographic Has Portraits Of Cows, Chickens And Seeds

After watching a PBS show about biodiversity, I am convinced now more than ever that racial diversity in the human community is necessary.  Too much similarity makes us vulnerable to infections.

Why National Geographic Has Portraits Of Cows, Chickens And Seeds

This is what you should do

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

Preface to the Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

The last day of Amelia Earhart

On this day in 1937, Amelia Earhart was last heard from, somewhere over the Pacific. She had set out, with navigator Fred Noonan, to fly around the world. She said, “I have a feeling that there is just about one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this trip is it.” They left Miami on the first of June, and had completed all but about 7,000 miles of the trip when they landed in New Guinea. Maps of the area were inaccurate, and Noonan had some trouble navigating between the islands in the central Pacific. U.S. Coast Guard ships were stationed on the route to their next stop, the tiny Howland Island, to help guide them.

Earhart and Noonan took off from New Guinea, and were in sporadic communication with the Coast Guard cutter Itasca. The weather was cloudy and rainy, with very low visibility, and transmissions — when they came through at all — were faint and full of static. At 7:42 a.m., Earhart communicated: “We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low. Been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet.” Her last transmission, at 8:45 a.m., was “We are running north and south.”

There’s a growing body of evidence to suggest that she and Noonan may have made a forced landing on reef near a waterless, uninhabited island called Nikumaroro, and that they may have survived as castaways for a period of some months, collecting rainwater in the leaves of tropical plants and living off fish, birds, and turtles. Scientists are analyzing DNA from a number of sources, and an underwater exploration to look for remnants of the plane is scheduled for the summer of 2012.

She had a habit of writing letters to her husband, George Putnam, before each expedition, in case it should be her last. In one, she wrote: “Please know I am quite aware of the hazards. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”

Fireflies

All the fireflies in the world
are gathered in our yard tonight,
flickering in the shrubs
like an ostentatious display
of Christmas lights out of season.
But the music in the air
is the music of heat, of August-
cicadas scraping out
their thin, harsh treble
like country fiddlers settling in
for a long night. I feel at home
with their relentless tune,
minimalist, like the eighties.

“Cavelleria Rusticana” by Lisel Mueller

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According to Wikipedia, Cavalleria Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry) is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.

Last night, Cana caught at least twenty fireflies and placed them into a plastic box.  The box glowed.