As with any good fan,
I live and die with
the undulating fortunes of my team.
When they win,
I am all smiles, at peace
with the positive harmonies of the earth.
When they lose,
I wear an abject look of grief,
and feel catastrophe has been visited upon the world.
“You take it much too personally,” my wife says.
How can I not when the future of my happiness,
or lack of it, rests in such precarious balance,
on the knife edge of win or lose?
Each home run for my team elicits peals of joy;
each home run for theirs sinks me
into the abyss in the canyon of despair.
How delicate my equilibrium is
when it can be knocked off-center
by the vagaries of hit and miss
by a group of men playing a boys’ game.
THE POETRY OF THE GAME