FIELD OF DREAMS 2022

by Julian O. Long

The Chicago Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds, 4-2, on Thursday, but that was hardly the point. Major League Baseball had once again found its way to Dyersville, Iowa, for its Field of Dreams game, and a sport that sometimes struggles with its technological future got a reminder of how great the game can be when it is broken down into its simplest form. “It’s really magic,” Cubs catcher Willson Contreras told reporters of the field, which is a short walk from the one used in “Field of Dreams,” the 1989 film starring Kevin Costner. “It has some kind of energy that I think is real.” —The New York Times, August 12, 2022

We gather as to a shrine
as to a place where prayer
has been valid, not to kneel
but to play or to observe
a sacred game. Sound of our
own wheels drove us crazy
but the year Matt Carpenter
rose from the dead and flashed
across the great white way like
a comet there was still America.
There were still the boys of summer
men playing a boys’ game dressed
in the holy garments of acolytes, dressed
in gladiatorial splendor, stadiums
full or empty still arrayed about
a plate we still called home.


Julian O. Long is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. His poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. Recent online publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, Raw Art Review, CulturMag, and Litbreak Magazine.

BY ANY OTHER NAME: SPRING TRAINING ANGST

by Earl J. Wilcox

If some kids played it on the Pittsburgh

streets with only a Wiffle ball, a crooked

stick, and one lad to keep it from the gutters.

 

If they played it on a loamy garden patch

in an Arkansas village with a ball made

from old socks around a ball of twine.

 

If kids of any age and many sizes

played the game on a sandlot

in Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic.

 

Even if the Japanese kids decided to

practice ten hours a day just to make

the team for the family’s pride.

 

If the boys of summer began practice

in winter, in a game that no longer

uses bat boys, has no fans in the stands... 

 

And if this game has no hot dogs or

peanuts and Crackerjacks and many

players wear kerchiefs and masks

 

And if they can no longer blow bubble

gum or eat pumpkin seeds or swat each

other on the butt after a terrific play.

 

And if the balls and strikes are called

by a robot squatting behind the screen

in the stands or hovering in a drone.

 

We will still call this game BASEBALL.

 

Earl Wilcox dedicates this poem to the late Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose "Baseball Canto" remains the iconic tribute to our national pastime.

WHITE TURNS TO BLACK

by Mary Clurman

i.

don’t know Black

don’t think Black

don’t speak Black

but like to listen

hear the sharp breaks

twists and turns

White is privilege.

In COVID

we garden

        cook

 think bitter thoughts

await a different regime.

ii.

Hasn’t changed yet!

Not for better:

Made the ballot secret 

  Blacks can’t vote if they can’t read—

can’t win anyway—

  Don’t even try!

  Only eggheads need good schools

   and what do eggheads know?

 Bus ‘em!
     so what,

      got no brains to think with anyway.

Then came jazz.

Music changed.

Boys of Summer

black, winning

Shut the doors!

  Keep ‘em out!

basketball 

Blues 

Hip-Hop

Thurgood Marshall Martin King Anita Hill

strong black middle class

iii.

Who was it

Packed the court,

just stacked ‘em in!

forgetting

           They still get to serve us coffee

coughing 

while our white blood flows as red as it can get. 

It’s time Whites learn from Black.

Mary Clurman, Princeton, NJ, retired Montessori teacher, struggling with the virus news and changing what I can.