Poetry Sunday: Baseball by Gail Mazur

Baseball is sometimes referred to as a metaphor for life and I suppose it can be interpreted that way, but for those of us who love it, it is first and foremost just a game. A game that is played on lovely green fields within the designated chalk lines. It has rules and it has disinterested arbiters to enforce those rules. The winners are determined by the skill and acumen of the players and their ability to play within those rules. Would that winners in life were always determined in that same way.

Baseball

by Gail Mazur

for John Limon

The game of baseball is not a metaphor   

and I know it’s not really life.   

The chalky green diamond, the lovely   

dusty brown lanes I see from airplanes   

multiplying around the cities   

are only neat playing fields.   

Their structure is not the frame   

of history carved out of forest,   

that is not what I see on my ascent.

And down in the stadium,

the veteran catcher guiding the young   

pitcher through the innings, the line   

of concentration between them,   

that delicate filament is not   

like the way you are helping me,   

only it reminds me when I strain   

for analogies, the way a rookie strains   

for perfection, and the veteran,   

in his wisdom, seems to promise it,   

it glows from his upheld glove,

and the man in front of me

in the grandstand, drinking banana   

daiquiris from a thermos,

continuing through a whole dinner

to the aromatic cigar even as our team

is shut out, nearly hitless, he is

not like the farmer that Auden speaks   

of in Breughel’s Icarus,

or the four inevitable woman-hating   

drunkards, yelling, hugging

each other and moving up and down   

continuously for more beer

and the young wife trying to understand   

what a full count could be

to please her husband happy in   

his old dreams, or the little boy

in the Yankees cap already nodding   

off to sleep against his father,

program and popcorn memories   

sliding into the future,

and the old woman from Lincoln, Maine,   

screaming at the Yankee slugger   

with wounded knees to break his leg

this is not a microcosm,   

not even a slice of life

and the terrible slumps,

when the greatest hitter mysteriously   

goes hitless for weeks, or

the pitcher’s stuff is all junk

who threw like a magician all last month,   

or the days when our guys look

like Sennett cops, slipping, bumping   

each other, then suddenly, the play

that wasn’t humanly possible, the Kid   

we know isn’t ready for the big leagues,   

leaps into the air to catch a ball

that should have gone downtown,   

and coming off the field is hugged   

and bottom-slapped by the sudden   

sorcerers, the winning team

the question of what makes a man   

slump when his form, his eye,

his power aren’t to blame, this isn’t   

like the bad luck that hounds us,   

and his frustration in the games   

not like our deep rage

for disappointing ourselves

the ball park is an artifact,

manicured, safe, “scene in an Easter egg”,   

and the order of the ball game,   

the firm structure with the mystery   

of accidents always contained,   

not the wild field we wander in,   

where I’m trying to recite the rules,   

to repeat the statistics of the game,

and the wind keeps carrying my words away