Farewell To Midway Stadium, St. Paul, Minnesota Poem by James P. Roberts

In the fading October afternoon sun
the murals, painted twenty years ago,
now peeling and, in places, entirely
flaked away, appear stark and abandoned.

The last game has been played, the gates
shuttered and faded banners flap
in the wind.I stand there, myself
a relic from the storied past, in another town.

The St. Paul Saints will have a new home
come Spring, but what kind of memories
will remain here?Will Ila Borders forever
be reaching up for an autograph to sign?

Tim Blackwell's mustache a nest for migrating birds?
Will the Ice Cream Man always shout his wares?
Names and faces parade along the cement wall,
hundreds, thousands -all with a story to be told.

I walk beneath a flaming tree shedding its leaves.
A solitary baseball lies almost hidden beneath a bush.
I pick it up and smell it.It is heavy, soaked by past
rains and frayed red threads unravel as I toss it

back and forth between my hands, remembering
days when I held the fate of batters in this little sphere.
Smiling, I rear back and throw the ball
over the fence where it falls to the still green grass

of the infield.It rolls to a stop just beyond first base
and it is only then that I notice the football goal posts
already in place and glinting in the last rays of the sun.
It is a new season: the calendar has turned, and so do I

slowly circumnavigating the stadium.Sometimes
it is all a matter of perspective.What looks like one
thing close up reveals itself differently
when you step away.Now the ghosts fade:

nights and bright lights and trains,
players in their uniforms performing
their intricate dance, the sharp thwack of the bat
recede, now an ebbing tide, a forgotten life.