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.