by Louise Grieco
Baseball is something
like love. There’s an elegance
about it — a fine tension.
Fielders pluck comets
from thin and glorious air.
pitchers make solid spheres
disappear. And batters smash meteors
with matchsticks.
But fielders also topple
over fences, sprawl empty-handed
in the dust. Pitchers throw wild.
And batters sometimes tilt
at windmills.
Yet they lean in — watch — wait.
They risk looking foolish
in order to be brilliant.
Louise Grieco’s baseball poems often travel at lightspeed to the outer reaches of the galaxy. More a fan of the sport than of any particular team, she nevertheless rooted for the Yankees as a child growing up near Boston in the 1950’s-’60s. She lives and writes in Albany NY.