Baseball

 

Like the river in The Oxbow,
the game bends without hurry -
storm behind it, sunlight ahead,
nothing to be won, only held.

I sit farther back now,
where the view widens
and the game no longer asks me to hurry.
Summer lies across the field
the way light lies in old paintings -
patient, deliberate,
confident it will be noticed eventually.

I remember when my body was part of this grammar:
cleats biting dirt,
hands stinging awake,
every play a question I thought I had to answer.
I believed the meaning waited at the end -
final score, final out -
as if joy were something awarded.

Now the inning opens like a long breath.
The ball travels its small white arc,
returns.
Nothing insists.
The grass keeps its color.
Time loosens its grip.

The field reminds me of The Oxbow -
that wide, bending river
where wilderness and pasture
share the same light,
storm receding without apology,
sun arriving without triumph.
No side conquers the other.
They simply remain.

So it is here.
Between pitches, memory rises -
a season, a loss,
the clean joy of contact,
the quiet instruction of failure.
All of it held,
none of it demanding judgment.

I watch the shadows lengthen
the way they always have.
A bat cracks, not sharply,
just enough to mark the moment.
Someone cheers.
Someone misses.
The world continues, generous and unbothered.

I understand now
what the game was teaching me all along:
that winning and losing are weather,
but the field is the land itself.
That to be present -
to stay -
is the lasting thing.

When I leave, the light is thinning,
the painting nearly complete.
I carry nothing away
except the pleasure of having seen it again,
and the quiet certainty
that this, too, was enough.

GBS jr

2022