Summer Days: Baseball poems by Chip Dameron

Relay Man 
                  

              Somebody drives

the ball through the gap in left

center, and the shortstop drifts

beyond the infield’s arc, waiting

for the left or center fielder

to run the ball down and fling it

toward him.

                      On the fly or off

a hop, no matter, the thing’s

to time the swing back home,

turning and whipping a hard

overhand to the plate, where

the runner from first cannot slide

out of his pending doom, ball

buried in a leather web, ending

the inning.

                      At short you live

to make the pivot, you trust

your arm to get it right, this

humming toward home, and lordy

do you let it fly.

Game Catch

          The closest thing

to a lie is a moment’s

deepest yes: the perfect

dive for a ball off a bat,

the gloved and echoed sting

verifying every hidden wish,

the shift and fling as true

as summer.

                       The hum we hear

is just the buzzing of the day’s

doings, wind across an infield,

electric lights that click on

and carve out a lifetime,

where line drives up the alleys

can tear holes in the air

that can’t be fixed.

 Chip Dameron is the author of a travel book and seven collections of poetry, including two published in 2015: Waiting for an Etcher (Lamar University Press) and Drinking from the River: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2015 (Wings Press). His poems and essays on contemporary writers have appeared in the Mississippi Review, Southwestern American Literature, San Pedro River Review, Puerto del Sol, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New Orleans Review, New Texas, and many other journals and anthologies, as well as publications in Canada, Ireland, Nigeria, India, China, Thailand, and New Zealand. Dameron has co-edited two literary magazines, Thicket and Chachalaca Poetry Review, and served on the editorial board of four others. A two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in poetry, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, and Professor Emeritus at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, he lives and writes in Brownsville, Texas.