Dangerous Business

practicing license

   without a medicine man

      it’s dangerous business

Baseball like an Olson poem . . .

Short lines, long lines

      inning by inning

meaning mainly in things

      including the end

fun, even stimulating

      to last all the way through

though, over & against

      your own point of view

one of the game’s

      great odd pulls.

The next day, another

      game, another transmission

substitute broadcaster

      Scott Hatteberg

credits a barrel-chested

      fan in a Raiders cap

who makes a barehand snag

      of a foul ball

with a “barbaric yawp.”

     (April 2013)

Why I like baseball

I.

Its fearful symmetry.  Blake? 

The Tyger?  Well, I was a Tiger fan

in those halcyon days of

Almaden Mountain White Wine

with friends at table on Wealthy Street,

where times never got near

as tough as they seem to have

on Tom Clark’s Easy.

(cf. Tom’s light fantastic trip

“To Bill Lee” aka Spaceman.)

II.

Cody Ross at the plate with visions of . . .

well certainly not Gerard. 

Perfect pitch?  At 60° F &

51% H, and raining on AT&T

although not here on Ashton Ave.

only five miles away at most?

III.

The Giants score a run and preserve

their slender lead and can persevere

on toward a hoped for end.

IV.

Beach Blanket Babylon sings

God Bless America in the rain in the stretch

in something closely

approximating perfect pitch. 

     (October 2012)