This poem from Joshua Martin is a work of rare power and honesty.
—
Rooting
Because I’ve got too much time
on my hands these days, I go home
and find myself sitting on a bare metal
bleacher watching a little league game,
my hands gripping the ends of the metal
like the bar of a hang glider during
moments of intensity or running my fingers
along the rivets during the dull moments
of consecutive strikeouts. And because I haven’t
a son to fill the void between first and second
nor a brother to uproot crab grass in the outfield,
I focus on the team as a whole, how their legs
move in unison to trap a ground ball, or how
they congregate in the dugout to perform
the pagan ritual of the rally cap.
And as I watch them return to their designated
places on the diamond between innings, I can’t
help but think that this is America’s “hallmark
moment:” nine youths on a field thinking only
of baseball, as if the crack of a bat could
somehow mitigate the damage done by
as if a high fly ball caught in the deep leather
of a 12 year olds’ glove could somehow
rid my grandmother of cancer, get her dancing again.
But this is America, land of Shoeless Joe
and the just-a-little-bit-too-late boys of summer,
the dying any better than a televangelist
sparking an economic boom through scripture. And so
no matter the number of doubles hit on this tongue-lapping
July afternoon there won’t ever be enough runs scored to
father smokes like James Dean behind
the press box, from one day buying two forties from
the shortstop’s convenient store and wringing
out his car’s chassis like a wet towel in a roadside ditch,
or the pitcher from pressing a pistol to the three bones
in his ear to make sure he hears the click in his tree stand.
Shame though, because as I watch alone I’m filled
with a hope that proceeds the tabula rasa that is the
scorecard of these boys lives, these nine boys with dust clinging to
the roofs of their mouths like Necco wafers, and the
one scrawny kid riding the bench, beating his fists into his glove
like a jackhammer, waiting his turn to speed down to first base
and me and him exchanging a quick nod, which is the only thing left I can give.
***
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