CAN OF CORN

Dropping a can of corn
out here’s a sin.

Like swinging a bat
with the branches still in it.

Your Nebraska hills
are miles from Ohio lockers.

Maybe you didn’t know.
They got hills there now.

Maybe your earth’s flat,
maybe you locker’s dirt.

Like Yogi said,
“This game is
what it never wasn’t.”

This is no pastoral business.

This’s the diamond trade.
And that’s a damn big field.

And your leather don’t flash
with those rhubarb fingers.

There’s a factory job
back home, isn’t there?

Maybe that last factory job
went to your second cousin.

He’s probably there now,
pounding out widgets.

That too’s business.