When Baseball is Cancelled
Pandemic Poetry
You’re fine until your wife starts coughing
and death takes on the size and shape
of a garbage bag filled with worn out shoes,
every shoe filled with sand or crushed up gravel,
and every day you must pick a pair to wear,
dumping the grit and dust into piles
around the house, but still feeling it
working its abrasions between your socks
and the flesh between your toes,
the elastic around your ankles,
making every step a raw foray
into the truth of a life
where every breath must be examined
like some suspicious invasive thing,
measured and catalogued,
counting off the coughs like an umpire
at a game where the rules have changed,
but no one knows what they are,
you just keep counting until the batter falls,
you’re worried about your wife,
but you’re also worried about yourself,
about the number of shoes in the bag,
how its weight never seems to lessen,
about the accumulating mounds
of debris and detritus slowly swallowing
the floors of your house,
your feet so raw and sore now
it’s almost not worth the effort to stand,
but you must, you must stand,
people are watching, taking your temperature,
looking for any indication
that you’ve switched to the opposing team,
and soon, it’ll be your turn
to stand in the batter box
and start taking your swings.
________________________________________________________________
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this poem, please share it with your friends.
Here is another poem of mine you might like.
Get the book.
