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Box Lunch

by Wayne F. Burke

Eager to get to the ballfield
in the morning
to play
baseball, what I lived for
1964,
I followed the Major League scores,
batting averages, and standings;
the rest of the world no more
to me then
than a nightly news show
like Vietnam helicopter
womp womp,
machine gun rat-tat-tat;
I fed on
daily box scores in the newspaper
each breakfast
and left the ballfield only
to return home
for a meal
and on days it rained
I read books about baseball…
A guy my uncle knew, who
played for the local high school, had
played two years with the NY Yankees.

 

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Kiss

by Van

I remember rounding third once as if
all of America’s promise rode on my legs
There was a big commotion,
catcher, pitcher, gloves and a ball
were waiting for my pale legs.
I slid as slick as cupid’s bow
and scored lady luck’s run.
No kiss was so sweet.

 

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An Immortal’s Mortality

By Elliot Harris

There is a harsh reality:
No one escapes mortality.
Even if you were a baseball great,
You still cannot avoid such a fate.

Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver died,
And some fans of his likely cried.
Mortality and thoughts of Tom Seaver
Can turn us inward and into a griever.

A baseball immortal, that’s for sure
With a delivery that was so pure.
And yet with Death in the batter’s box
Not even the great ones can outfox.

No curve nor changeup nor blazing fastball
Has a chance against the swing of Death’s call.
All that is left on the great pitcher’s mound
Are the marvelous memories and joy unbound.

The Miracle Mets of long ago
Don’t seem so ancient to some of us, though
Who used to watch him and them play
When we were all young back in the day.

After Tom Seaver has been laid to rest
He still will remain among baseball’s best.
Still too will remain the human fragility:
We all will strike out against mortality.

(Editor’s Error: First submitted Sept. 3, 2020. RIP Tom Seaver)

 

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5

by Van

I swing,
with eyes: perfect,
brown bat — moving,
above brown dirt,
(above my bare brown feet).
Whistling seams widen my eyes;
the ball pops!
I hear my Dad (jumping off the mound).
He’s really twenty thousand people
cheering for me,
and my home run
(that went all the way over the dugout).

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In Spring

by Caroline Riley

There’s a sports metaphor for everything:
the wind does its thing down the river
and the crowd goes wild. A grand slam
of a Sunday: lumpy pancakes for breakfast
as the day breaks open, twin-yoked, lucky.
Corn and Sugar, those American gods,
or mascots, depending on how you look at them.
Was it just this summer that I felt like a rookie?
Usually just answering the question
is best. Yes. My sister, on the other hand,

is the one who really knows how I feel
about dogs, the way we both sprint
tongues-out towards the fun
that could hurt us, how we share a luck
that means it usually doesn’t —
think me getting on the school bus jacketless
and the clouds parting — a bat’s-crack
of thunder — then it’s gone,
every year on our late-May birthday.

 

Caroline Riley is a poet and writer from Maryland. She holds an MFA in poetry from West Virginia University. She currently lives in Philadelphia, but continues to support the Washington Nationals.