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Submission Guidelines: Send 1-3 unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.
Showing posts with label opening day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label opening day. Show all posts

Sunday, March 29, 2020

NOPENING DAY 2020

by Earl J. Wilcox





In one hand, a brown paper bag
holds my tuna fish sandwich,
sweet tea in a paper cup. I drag
my old beat-up folding chair
to the edge of my front drive way.
Dogwoods and pink azaleas provide
the color today instead of bright red
like that on my Cardinals baseball cap.
I fold myself down slowly, take out
my sandwich, sip my tea, wait
expectantly for the Clydesdales
to parade around the stadium. Atop
the wagon sit Musial and Brock—both
long gone—who wave back to me.
I stand as the National Anthem
is sung off-key, join in the last couple
of lines.  On a wire overhead a single
mockingbird joins my song, my game.


A longtime contributor to TheNewVerse.NewsEarl J. Wilcox has been a baseball fan even longer.

Monday, April 01, 2013

TAKING THE MOUND

by Mick Murphy


Thomas Eakins
Baseball Players Practicing, 1875
Watercolor on paper
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design


​                For Robbie

​You tidy up,
​as in a boys room,
​moving the earth around.

​Dirt and small bits of stone
​the rakes passed over.

​Sins of omission if
​left untended can cost you
​the game.

​Your pitcher’s crease
​is lamb white, your heart
​the same.

​Yet unmarked by the spikes
​of the enemy.

​Your arms are supple and
​ready under home
​cotton whites.

​Your glove new leather
​oiled and shaped the night before.

​You love our summer game.
​But they come, the people from
​the world, and you have to pitch to them.


Mick Murphy is astudent of Amy Holman at the Hudson Valley Writers center in Sleepy Hollow New York. A former business executive, he has studied and written poems for many years. His work looks at personal and spiritual issues and the intersection of these with the life of his generation. He lives in the Hudson Valley of New York. He also writes about sports.