Featured Poet:

The Allure of Baseball

Didn't your eyes discover her, Mick?
when your body pulled back, imprinted
your spikes into dark Yankee dirt,
and you shifted your weight, kicked up your leg?   
when your game left leg propelled your body
foreward, and with a smooth, whirlwind swing,
your body circling backwards,
you struck your bat at that dizzy dust
and missed?   O Mick! You who awoke
in the green outfield, the minion,
of Greek gods, upon you sunrises never set
and the afternoon shifted its rays to clear
your eyes and shot that missile straight
into your uprising glove.   Didn't you perceive
that without your uniform, the evening star
would not rise, and the dew would fall
watering the grass on your grave?   O Mick!
you mortal, you beggar, you old young man,
whose bandied legs were driven around
and around the infield.   Venus played you false.

For Mickey Mantle:   My Father's Son

Are your eyes still ready, Mick? Still ready
to kill that fast ball that God's child,
His son, my father,   blazes off the mound,
down the trail past God's throne into an angel's mitt?
Ah, Mick, you struck three times and missed,
and the archangels carry my father on their shoulders,
march round and round God's clouds of lightning
and then set him down before you upright.
You both embrace, you the son, the famous
ballplayer, my father always wanted
and he, the father, steadfast and far seeing:
the diligent weekday worker,
the commuter who traveled the narrow path
of rails, playing cards, and walked above
the water, as the ferry boat slooped up and down,
five days a week: my father, the provider,
who gambled that the switchmen were always sober,
that the Hudson's polluted waters would not baptize him;
my father, the father you needed after the gods
struck you down to your knees; my father, the lover,
who trashed his mitt for a beautiful wife.