Poem: The Fields

THE FIELDS

I was playing croquet
Outside the other day,
With the senior league,
Everyone wearing white,
So elegant, limbs lithe and alive,
Fending fatigue,
The weight of hot and humid Sarasota air,
With the sun now falling, much easier to bear.
Next to us, a baseball field,
Sixth graders whooping,
Parents onlooking
In folding chairs under multicolored umbrellas,
As one team had a shutout cooking.
The happy  hullabaloo disrupted our play,
One gets prickly as one grows grey.
Then a foul ball skipped over my way,
So I picked it up
To walk it back
To the home plate ump.
Mallet in hand I made my way
Across the grassy space
On my way to home base
As the home plate ump screamed at my face.
“You’re up!” and just like that
The mallet in my hand was a baseball bat.
I spun around, not seventy but twelve,
The onlookers stood and cheered and yelled.
I took my position at the plate,
No idea what was what,
The pitch came fast,
I swung too late,
The parents roared,
When the next pitch came
I was ready, having drawn
My memories of the baseball field
To my sunset from my dawn.
I made solid contact and the ball
Flew two feet over the shortstop’s head,
Bouncing toward the center field wall.
And as to first base I began to run,
There was my mallet in the dirt,
Radiating red in the setting sun.
What are you doing, old man?
Sir, are you OK, do you need some help?
I spun around and stuttered like a clown,
But it was real, it was real, for an instant
I had stared my old age down.
The umpire’s hand lay softly on my shoulder
As he gently led me toward the croquet lawn,
I should have been embarrassed,
But I was two feet off the ground,
Carol and Bob shuffled over to me,
You must have felt pretty dumb …
I reached into my pocket,
Out came three pieces of Bazooka bubble gum.

(Image – Wikimedia Commons)