PITCHES

All poets
Are pitchers of words
The text our goatskin
We heft it
Grind it into the lexical glove
Find the seams
And sometimes with the spitter
Add a drop of perspiration
Some resin smeared on the pants
Then look to the editor who catches
He signals two fingers for a sonnet
We shake it off
So how about blank verse
Hard and inside
My meat
We reach back into the stretch
Our ratiocination
Not too long in case a critic’s on first
No need to give away intentions
Maybe a little bump or tic
A twist in the glove to mystify the reader
Surprise is a must to succeed
Sometimes we play with the strike zone
Stretch the limits of imagination
And when a metaphor falls in the dust
Never try too hard to reuse it
The ump has a lexicon of shiny new ones
Sometimes the best outcome
Is a strikeout
Count my K’s
Some go all the way with nine long innings
Some meditate in the bullpen
Only seventeen perfect pitches
The closer’s neat
haiku