Nation Past-Time

My computer and I have been in the recovery room these past ten days. I’m told I somehow fried the circuitry and lost my Internet connection. It sounds like an extension of myself. My brain is also fried from over-exposure to the vocabulary of politics. I badly needed the time for triage.

I’ve taken refuge into the seventeen syllables of baseball haiku which make more sense than the Donald Trump bounce and has more coherence than his bombast. The game has been called our national pastime; it is played with no clock and is therefore past time with players running the bases counter-clockwise as if to unwind the clock.

Into a forest of green blades / a baseball rolls / Earth shrugs in orbit.


Mighty Casey takes called strike three / wings stilled / in Amazon rain forest.

Batter steps out of the box / Crickets hesitate / The scoreboard will wait. 

Mirrored moon in wet Chavez Ravine tarp / Game called / Climate change noted.

Another hot dispute / behind the umpires mask / Who bit the moon?

Cicadas drone a requiem / for double-header / no longer played.

Summersault catch in the outfield grass / Ants repair damage / while crowd cheers.

Outfielder climbing / heavy August air / Baseball waiting for his glove.

Batter crosses himself / like stretched rubber-band  / around bubblegum cards.

Left early in eighth to beat traffic / Tea gulped / without ceremony.

Manager flashes finger signs / Batter distracted / by butterflies.

Butterflies in his stomach /the knuckleballer / serves them to the plate.

In a slump / the batter can not recall / what went right during his streak.

Picked off second base / naked and erased / Pale moon can’t hide its craters.

Unshaven rookie pitcher / throws his menace / at patient veteran.

Conference on the mound / Cicadas regrouping / on the outfield grass.

Spectacular catch / Ovation just faintly heard / at concession stand. 

Beads of perspiration / thrown ninety-eight m.p.h. / swung on and missed.

Last of the ninth, two out / gulls from bay water overhead  /sense the end.

Fast ball down the middle / hit out of the park / craters found on the moon.

Line drives lose to bloop singles / game played on Mt. Olympus / by Greek Gods.

                 

Inside-the-park-homerun / Rounding third he knew enough / to retire.