ODE TO OPENING DAY

(with a tip of the hat to G. Chaucer)

When finally April with its sweet showers
Quenches the thirst of greening bowers
And bathes every starving baseball crank
(Who spent his winter learning to wank)
With those glorious, sibilant springtime sounds
Of balls and bats and pitchers on the mounds,
Then do ballists long to go on pilgrimages,
Yea, even to the remotest of the earth’s edges,
The holy blissful martyrs of the game to find
That hath rescued them from losing their mind.