Orientation To Baseball Poem by Glen Kappy
Orientation To Baseball
A reply to aficionados of other sports who ask,
'How can you like baseball? '
Baseball is a Duke's game in July
picking popcorn from a striped container, imbibing beer
consuming your own comestibles.
It's friends, colors, brilliance of New Mexico light
followed by a temperature-perfect evening.
It's not the movies or the theater where a cough is out of place.
It assumes relaxation, embodies 'casual.'
Cracks of bats and cheers of crowd are pleasant offerings
against summer cicada drone.
Well into October you can turn it on
with take-home midterm you need to work on
lunch to make, dishes to do
and it eases, comforts—
like the sudden scent of flowers on a tedious hike.
It's not football, basketball, hockey—
sports like work days on assembly lines
that only stop for lunch and breaks.
Baseball belongs with dogs on porches
cats in wisteria shade, lakes, row boats, fishing poles;
benches in parks while watching kids, pigeons
parents pushing strollers, and smiling old folks ambling by.
So when it finally gets too cold
it has to winter where it's warm—
the D.R. or Arizona or down in St. Pete.
Oh yes indeed you have captured it so wonderfully but how could a person that does not love baseball ever understand. Please read my poem The Prize and let me know what you think. As I type this I have paused the recorded Red Sox and Royals game. I am in Michigan but the great man from Massachusetts that was my stepfather passed away and in loving memory I wore the Red Sox hat daily and then began to watch them four years ago and I am hooked! I was eating up this poem like a fan that skipped dinner. Greedily devouring from that striped bag. Sports like work days on assembly lines are the other distractions but baseball in all of its American unique beauty keeps me sane. Baseball belongs with dogs on porches...........FANtastic G.K.!
hey, edmund! thank you for your enthusiastic appreciation which i, in turn, appreciate. yes, baseball here in the u.s., with the competing sports, seems to belong to a different era. but when i was growing up it was the sport. i'll definitely check out the prize. keep enjoying those red sox. glen p.s. red sox fans, like cubs fans, had a long wait for a world series, but the sox have been doing well for a while now. when i think of loyalty, i think or red sox and cubs fans. -g p.p.s. it took me a moment to get it, but i like FANtastic. -g
Hey Glen, I really like this one! You create the atmosphere so well, and many great images - sudden scent of flowers on a tedious hike, baseball belongs with dogs on porches and cats in wisteria shade. And cicada done' - so maybe you know what the noise in my ears sounds like...😜
glad you like it, laurie. thanks for the affirmation. cultural note: the albuquerque dukes have been replaced by the isotopes. -glen
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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5/12/2024 3:23:22 PM # 1.0.0.1119
It's not football, basketball, hockey— sports like work days on assembly lines that only stop for lunch and breaks. Baseball belongs with dogs on porches cats in wisteria shade, lakes, row boats, fishing poles; benches in parks while watching kids, pigeons parents pushing strollers, and smiling old folks ambling by. So when it finally gets too cold it has to winter where it's warm— the D.R. or Arizona or down in St. Pete. - - Your love for the baseball game has been so enthusiastically portrayed in this poem.- - A game to be played in the park, near a lake among your own folks around.
hi, bharati! i'm glad you discovered this poem. when i grew up the times were very different sports-wise in america. then baseball was america's main game, and i grew up playing baseball and games based on baseball. (i've not been to india, but i have this idea that for some there's enthusiasm for cricket, a precursor to baseball.) it strikes me that a commonality of this poem with much of my other work is a love for the outdoors. may we both continue to enjoy this world that shows in the macro and the micro signs of the creator. glen