Magic and Baseball: A Spring Poem

Loss of a thousand breaths

Something unexpected, but very early-spring, today: a baseball poem!! I’m sorry to all you beautiful readers who expect poems from me on rain, seasons, joy, and so on, but we’re taking a brief break for America’s past-time, since the season kicked off a week ago. I promise there’s something for you here. I don’t know much about baseball yet, but my husband loves it and is teaching me. I had no sports growing up - I didn’t grow up in America - but what I’ve learned, just this last year, is that sports are mainly about the lore. Being part of a living story. Sports, at their best, help us feel more alive.

Enough soliloquy. On to the poem!

---

Infield

Infield clay crack
Of bat like a plane lifting off the tarmac:
So we make things rise. 

Like a rocketship dropping away from earth,
Suffused with air and weightless power:

So the ball flares hungry to outfield. 
Like a father kneeling, waiting to catch 
In the labor room his first child in outspread palms -

So the triumphant slide into home plate. Loss
Of a thousand breaths. Stadium split 
With cheers, raucous, delighted, inspired. 

We’re all greedy for sudden triumph. 
Transcendence. The silver-sheen of magic;
Ball spinning and spinning, cascading in air. 

Waiting for the moment we too, 
Lose gravity, loose hold of ropes and lines, 
Fly toward home base, 
And rise and rise into cloudless blue skies. 


~love, Claire Adderholt