Baseball Poem by Bill Zavatsky

We were only farm team
not "good enough" to
make big Little League
with its classic uniforms
deep lettered hats.
But our coach said
we were just as good
maybe better
so we played
the Little League champs
in our tee shirts
and soft purple caps.

What happened that afternoon
I can't remember—
if we won or tied.
But in my mind
I lean back
to a popup hanging
in a sunny sky
stopped
nailed to the blue
losing itself in a cloud
over second base
where I stood waiting.

Ray Michaud who knew
my up-and-down career
as a local player
my moments of graceful genius
my unpredictable ineptness
screamed arrows at me
from the dugout
where he waited to bat—
"He's gonna drop it! He
don't know how to catch,
you watch it drop!"

The ball kept lifting
higher, a black dot
no rules of gravity, no
brakes, a period searching
for a sentence, and the sentence read:
"You're no good Bill
you won't catch this one now
you know you never will."

I watched myself looking up
and felt my body rust
in pieces to the ground
a baby trying to stand up
an ant in the shadow of a house

I wasn't there
had never been born
would stand there forever
a statue squinting up
pointed out laughed at
for a thousand years
teammates dead, forgotten
bones of anyone who played baseball
forgotten
baseball forgotten, played no more
played by robots on electric fields
who never missed
or cried in their own sweat

I'm thirty one years old.
The game was over twenty years ago.
All I remember of that afternoon
when the ball came down

is that I caught it.