Unlike “Field of Dreams,”
my father did not play catch with me.
Indeed, he did not know
a football from a baseball,
but taught me instead the pitch of language.
I learned how to be my father’s son,
my singles, new words,
my home runs, well-constructed paragraphs.
As I turned to manhood,
rounded the bases of my career,
I even fielded a family of my own.
I did not teach my own sons
the finer points of pitch and catch,
but instructed them instead
on the virtues of a greater vocabulary.
The result of this education,
means one less person in the stands,
and one less story of a father
playing catch with his son,
something lost then, a pastime in peril.
THE POETRY OF THE GAME