“October,” by Hester Jewell Dawson

Here’s a piece that was first published in 1986 in Stone Country.  I haven’t been able to figure out whether Stone Country is a newspaper, magazine, journal, or what, but that’s not nearly as important as the poem itself.

*

the high fly ball,
arches out above left field,
hangs there in the sky
outblazing the sun
while fifty thousand heads swings and cry
“Over the wall! Over the wall!”

then hold, fixed and dumb
as the ball drops
down and down, a dead bird
into a waiting glove

and there you have it: the song,
the flight, the perilous whisper of truth
or of love or possibly of faith

then the descent
and the end of the game