The Game
--Bruce Smith

The artist is a creep with his little boxes, but the athlete is a man
who has stolen glory in all its forms, stolen honey in a cup
...............from the gods
and hidden it in his insides where the bees drone. I’m always a boy
as I sit or stand in the shouting place and breathe the doses of men—
smoke and malt—as the night comes down in the exact pattern
of a diamond, a moonlit hothouse of dirt a boy knows is something
to spit on and pat into a shape. Dirt’s a cure for the buried someone.
Even as it begins with its anthem, it’s lost to me, the exact color
of devotion. So goodbye to the inning and other numbers
...............on scoreboards
and the backs of our team, our blue and red, our lips, our business,
which is to rip into them, a boy learns, or bark at the hit or miss.
Men have skill, although I see them fail and fail again and fail to hit
the curve. I’m always a girl as I aww and ooo. What’s
...............the infield-fly rule?
I tried to watch the grips and tricks, the metaphysics, the spin,
the positions of fast and still, scratch and spit . . . but I thought,
in all this infinity, of the Clementes, the Mayses, and the Yogis,
of the bats of ash I would have to crack and would I have to squeeze
them home? Would I be asked to sacrifice? Would I belly-button it
or break my wrists trying not to swing? There’s a box and a zone
in the air and the dirt I must own. To find my way out
or know where it is I sit, I keep my ticket stub in my fist.