-
True Love
- Red Hen Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
236 True Love for Maxine Kumin Sometimes when Colleen and I wake up in the morning, before we even get out of bed, we say a few things about the day and anticipate the newspaper headlines. And then we talk about the baseball game. Baseball’s what’s right with the world, and good game or bad, there’s something to say about it. We love the whole vocabulary of action and the encyclopedic litany of measurement— sixty feet six inches from pitcher to hitter, fields as small as bandstands or spacious as national parks. And then there’s the speculative fiction of how our pitching will hold up against really heavy hitters, the kind from the Midwest whose statistics are beefy, or East Coast lineups whose averages soar like skyscrapers. If home runs could inscribe the air, last night’s fusillade would hang there, a neon arcade of arching and ethereal trails backed up by palm trees and headlights in the parking lots that ring Dodger Stadium, itself a stack of circles, and nothing at all like the flat courts of the Aztecs where “play ball” was a death sentence. 237 Much better here where there’s always a tomorrow, a clean score sheet waiting for its statistical narrative to unfold among greasy popcorn fingerprints and cotton candy smears in rainbow colors. Who can’t love the “pandemaniacal” anthems of the crowd, the beach balls bounding from the outfield pavilions, the improbable and impossible overlap of diamonds and circles and squares all in play? It’s enough to get you out of bed in the morning and, like Max, get all your poetry written before the first pitch of the day is thrown. [3.145.64.132] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 20:48 GMT) This page intentionally left blank. ...