I am swinging for the fences
in the Class A Poetry League.
Like Roy Hobbs,
I have dropped out of
the major leagues of writing,
and now after ten years away,
I must pack my “Wonder Pen”
to start all over at the bottom.
The wait at the plate seems interminable –
“We’ll let you know if it is a hit
six months from now, and then allow you
to run the bases, if published, in a year or so.”
Do I have that much time?
I size up each opposing magazine manager
to see what pitches he will call for:
The sensuous curve of a sweet lyric?
The sizzling fastball of blank verse?
The slow change of a long prose/poem?
I brace myself for the inevitable “no,”
dig back in at “we have received.”
I must try to spray my writing
to as many fields as possible,
left, center and right, and maybe one day
I will hit a high arc of a towering poem
and bust out all the lights once again.
THE POETRY OF THE GAME