Michael Schein
4-6-3 Poetry
There is no poetry in ball players
They’re just guys
chasing a ball to get paid
or laid
or because life is complicated
and baseball is simple.
But there is poetry a-plenty
in a well-turned play:
the swoop of leather
as the second baseman shovels the ball
to the shortstop
pirouetting over the bag
toes obscured by the runner’s dust
the pivot in thin air
followed by a snap snap at first
the kiss of the ball
in the outstretched mitt
as the runner’s arched foot
slaps first
slicing the moment
like shaved ice,
alternate universes
branching before the eyes of thousands
until a lumbering umpire
who can’t tell the difference
between velveeta and cheddar
unifies the quantum and macro fields by barking
"OOOWWWWW"
as he jerks his crooked thumb
into the rift of the continuum.
A 4-6-3 double play,
common as daisies on a summer day
exotic as antediluvian pottery.
Afterwards, the play is
forgotten in the post-game wrap-up,
where guys named Hector and Biff
scratch and shift before the cameras,
reducing the day’s wonders
to cliches rubbed so smooth
that they slither off the tongue
direct from the belly,
all prosy
and mucosoid,
unimpaired
by thought
by heart
or by the 4-6-3
double play
poetry.
But still the play
lingers
unspoken
in some better world.
©2004 by Michael Schein
