Roy Morrison

Summer's First Day

On the way to the Atlanta Braves tryout
Late adolescent moment of truth
Judging under 50 year old watchful eyes
You're on the mound trying to throw
the ninety mile an hour fastball
summoned by the baseball divinities and
measured by the imperious radar gun
The number greeted with knowing nods of
regard or conditional dismissal for a Division II arm.
Envisioning with an old man's seasoned disappointment
what should, instead of what could be.
Could's safely banished, except for dreamers,
not scouts, to the lake of drowned hopes
along with their little boys' wonder.
But why are we all here and not hunched over
tapping keys in some computer poisoned abattoir?
Baseball, like poetry, provides a respite
even on the soon to be compromised cusp between
amateur and pro where for unaccountable instants
truth and beauty still fills green fields and blank pages.

II

Sam's eyes peek above the translucent skirt at
the bottom of the batting cage as the ball
thumps into the catcher's mitt.
Wicked stuff, my friend Renee says of
a passed over, picked over pitcher
climbing up from the last rung.

Rene's encouraged Mark, 14 year old phenom,
to try out, to get measured, clocked, and appraised.
His dad, big Mark, coaches Sam in Warner's
Kearsarge Mountain League.
Let scouts see how the boy progresses as
he becomes a man, driving on winter roads
for indoor coaching in Beverly Mass,
to be tutored, vetted, and become, if not a
major league prospect, a friend of the Braves, maybe
assisted into the right College baseball program.
But today, little Mark, youngest kid on the field,
is sent by Rene after running and throwing, to shag flies
in the outfield as the prospects are chosen to bat.

Master of the tryout, chief scout John Stewart
bestrides the mound adjusting a pitcher's release point,
offering a helpful word for each kid.
Stewart lanyards humanity and good baseball business sense
rejecting the reductionist meat market message.
Teacher, scout, good guy.

III

On the way to the tryout we have a flat,
thumming to a stop with frozen lugnuts
a pile of kayak gear that covered the sissy spare lying in the road.
Rescued by Peter Ladd with his breaker bar.
Sammy coached on the just so's of blocking wheels,
kicking the breaker bar's handle,
symmetrically loosening and tightening lugnuts.
Juggling cars, we're late on the way to the judging,
the appraisal of the dream.

We arrive as the winnowed chosen
stand along the first base line waiting
for their moment on the mound with John Stewart
watching, instructing in just so's of pitching,
of Rene's chicken wing arm extension, balance, stride, release.
Eighty-nine and eighty-eight drills the ball across the plate
from the stocky cocoa skinned kid the real thing aspiring.
Stewart shakes his hand as he does with all the kids.

In the parking lot it's Sam's turn, as Rene corrects flaws in his swing.
Grab the bat with fingers, not palms, line up your knuckles,
hold a batting glove under your right arm in practice as
you swing to get bat speed, power and a level cut...
Rene Lopez used to catch the tryout but his knees have gone bad.
Fifty-three he can still hit the ball in the ninety mile an hour cage.
A baseball man, the team he coached integrated the Boston Park League,
and still he trawls the northern New England puckerbrush for
poor kids looking for a chance, a way out.

IV

I'm throwing overhand curves now to Sam,
the ball breaking sharply, diving down,
Major league stuff, Sam says.
I bring my heat and Sam hammers the hard ones.
He's spraying line drivers and hard grounders.
A bad hop catches me in the bicep to
raise a puffy baseball size blue and purple bruise.
The metal bat pings with a hollow dead mechanical sound.
The wooden Louisville slugger speaks with a sharp vibrant crack,
the sound soaring with the ball, racing over the outfield and
into the stands, the sound of summer immemorial.
I hit fungo grounders and liners to Sam at third
with the hollow topped wooden bat.
He charges bouncing balls, stabs liners with a quick glove,
moving deep behind the bag he backhands a hard shot and
with a twist, leaps into the air and fires the ball home.
Then it's back to the mound.

Drenched in the sun and sounds and sweat I pitch and he hits
until we're both too tired to play anymore.
Our bags of balls are spread over the field,
scattered like manna on the grass and
retrieved like klondike gold nuggets
to be dropped into mesh bags for safe keeping.

We lug with a satisfied wordless languor armfuls of bats,
the bags of balls, gloves, and water bottles across the field toward the
car.
The sun gleaming off the veridian outfield and flint sparkling infield.
We trudge in the kind of successful good day silence that
anoints you after a mythic ninth inning of an epochal seventh game.
What humanity can still pass between men and boys in
this strange game with sticks, leather mitts and rock hard balls.

Butcher

Where was trust
the poetry murdered
dream no more now
than an argument among
butchers over
the swine's carcass.
Corrupt bastards.
Collegially arrayed about
the Louis XIV tableaux.
They whine as the next
doomed pig screams.
Finally with a gasp
in bloodied white smock
I'm raising the gleaming cleaver.
About to receive the crown.

Butcher II

So much to tell.
Things that can't be spoken
but in gasps, the words pinched,
held on the chopping block
as truths run down the blood grove.
The whole mess tied off,
strung with the grace of sausages knotted
at the ends by their intestinal casings.
Dangling, finding courage to
unleash a reticent word
awaiting a definitive slice.

Liberation

In a time of imposed stringency
I conditionally pardon myself
Relax care, grant manumission and license to
Permit action not inimical to the good,
In fact its outward manifestation.
There was risk juicy as a tree ripe peach in that,
The fear my dance will fling the moon down, deflate planets.
But in retrospect my fraught drama the dance of dust motes.
Still, of what else was I custodian, doyen of care,
Life as catatonia, of oratorios flattened along the edge of my tongue.
Unaccountably, surprise, the saber tooth rises from the tar.

© 2004 by Roy Morrison

Cover Design: Joseph McNair