Contact

How else are we enabled to mow summer lawns
than by the swing of the contact hitter?
He is steady over one sixty-two
and teaches us to be steady.
He knows that the game is not
to the home run hitter alone,
but to the measured pacing of the season's train.

Injury and heartache,
catastrophe and simple strain--
they all must tell, but there's a canny balance
to be gained from an eye that finds the gap
and a stance that takes whatever pitch is given.

The contact hitter understands
the storms of spring and summer's droughts,
the soar, the fall. The through it all, the keeping on:
they are his example. We are better players since
we saw it, his old truth:
bell curves save the day for all of us
and in the longest run,
the advantage is with the average.

April 22 2012