The Poetry of Extra Innings Gone By

Extra Innings

The answers only count at the end.
The wiry lefty Hank Aguirre comes set.
Delivers. It’s going, going, gone.
Aguirre takes a season to watch
the arc disappear into the stands.

Now the numbers match. A runner lopes
around the bases. Extra frames loom.
This slugfest could go on and on. Endlessly.
What I love about the game. Extra innings.

An unfinished puzzle of threes and nines beguiles me.
A timeless philosophy. Another inning over.
Dick McAuliffe scampers into the dugout; he’ll lead off.
Aguirre clambers across the foul line.
The game was his. Only the last, 27th
unreasonable doubt had remained.

And he lost it. Over the fence.
Now there’s room for more.
Twenty-seven mistakes, done. History.
The next pitch could be another answer.

Think of Picasso’s cubist curve,
a three-step dance across the interior
of a dream called strike three.
Not high and hard. Not this time.
It’s a slider that fractures space into
shards. It’s here. No, it’s not. It’s there.
It’s artistry. A puzzle.

A strikeout with the bases loaded.
A sense of loss. A curtain of grief. Mouth moving,
but no words. The thermometer is no longer rising.
Autumn promises closure. The time when those nine
questions will be remembered.

The time when Matisse paints the wind into draperies
of memory, and hurricane fastballs assure no victory.
When relievers take the mound and fail to paste
their regrets back together. That’s when I close my eyes.
The third time I’ve lost my place. Is the count 3 and 2?

I cannot tell magenta from purple, black
from white. How do we know what we think
we know? Suppose three squares of the puzzle
are shaded white? Suppose there’s a twelfth frame?

Warm-up those words that ripple in mid-sentence,
like a fastball roped into the gap. Collisions.
And more collisions. That’s how the universe formed.
The way questions are answered in October.
When three balls can lead to four bases. When
the mind refuses to face defeat because the answer
suffocates hope. The bases drained of life. A pale
vignette. This is the ninth time I’ve lost my place.

Both Matisse and Picasso painted
the muscular geometry of slugger Rocky Colavito,
his bat pointing straight at the pitcher
as if he was accusing him of a balk, or worse.
But the impression disappears, glazed
onto the ceramics of the night sky
without even … remorse. Nope.

Colavito unhinges like a spring and
the ball flies over the fence. A dugout
explodes in fury. It makes a sound heard around
the city. If only nine was in the third position,
or was it three in the ninth position?
I open my eyes. Grainy black and white.
The season has ended. Aguirre slaps Colavito
on the back. All mistakes are forgiven.

I close my eyes again, three times,
as if only I imagined it.

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