Thursday, May 17, 2007

Baseball from 4000 feet

My flight from Dallas to Philadelphia ended in a holding pattern over Philly, as the plane took three circles around northern Delaware and southern Pennsylvania, each one tighter than the other. The pilot even made a joke about it, calling it 'The Philly Factor".

We were fairly low, so I gazed out the window and took in the sights in the setting sun. This still feels incomplete...

Row 747, Upper Deck

At four thousand feet,
I search for baseball fields.
They will appear stamped into the landscape --
sometimes a pair at angles to each other
in a green neighborhood square,
sometimes a collection of brown diamonds
and connected green outfields
symmetrically placed near a building,
probably the school,
sprawled on the fringe of town.

But what I wish for
is that random trampled ground
marked out with four uneven scars for bases
and pitcher’s dirt torn in the middle of unmanicured grass --
where a flock of kids chase a white dot
while one boy tosses aside his toothpick of a bat
as he streaks down the thin brown path
and lands safely on first,
wheels down, far below.

5 comments:

Clare said...

I really like the feeling of this and the vivid imagery!

gautami tripathy said...

Actually thisis complete in its incompleteness. If you know what I mean.

Watching the ground from from so much above has that effect.

"But what I wish for
is that random trampled ground
marked out with four uneven scars for bases
and pitcher’s dirt torn in the middle of unmanicured grass --"

Liked those lines.

Anonymous said...

I like this. As chance would have it, a few minutes ago I was picturing football fields from above, described as an apotheosis of the Midwestern mania for squareness in this excellent essay - http://www.surveyhistory.org/why_the_midwest_is_square1.htm
- which made me think about baseball fields in the East!

Anonymous said...

Very descriptive and I can completely picture what the poem describes. I thought the undercurrent of nostalgia in the poem was very effective as well.

Crafty Green Poet said...

That type of view is my favourite part of flying - well described.