THE BABE

Babe Ruth steps to the plate,

winks at the pitcher like he’s looking

in a mirror, like this of all days

has light enough for all involved.

The Babe raises his long bat

toward the right-center stands,

just to remind himself, to keep steady

that place inside so frequently

senseless and elsewhere.

The Babe would rather be on a bus,

be one of the faces briefly seen,

murmuring only to itself, remembering

clothes hung on a make-shift line,

the one sock out on the end mateless.

It’s flooding somewhere tonight in America,

the Babe is thinking. Another crop

down the drain. He looks up and the ball

hangs there, supple, a sphere, Earth itself

as if seen from orbit, its oceans and land

distinct. Faith’s an enigma, the Babe thinks.

Loneliness makes everything into a mirror,

he thinks. He can see the pitcher’s leg

sidle-sling, plop and stir the dust.

The Babe steps forward. The Babe swings.

In a gallery, not far from here,

a woman composed of paint and otherwise real,

looks nonchalantly downward. A diamond

punctuates her turned neck, turned

for what reason, toward or away from whom?

A window must be near. Or another season.

Children on a sidewalk out of vision

can be heard drawing off the lines

for hopscotch. Rain is days away.

The crowd rises to its aching, adamant feet.

Someone has remembered why he’s here,

and it’s infectious and involves screaming.

The Babe feels his own chin turn, a force,

an exhaltation toward the faint thing

the heart makes a temple for.

Men have died crawling through barbed wire,

having hours before written letters home.

Windmills, without wind, stand motionless

on the plains. No two moments ever knew

one another, though side by side.

The Babe thinks, In the soul

is everything soluble? He steps

into the baseline and the grooves of memory

in the infinite miles of mind present here.

The Babe sometimes feels like a sheep

on a hillside, way up, like a dreamed thing.

Pure going now, rounding first base,

he’s like a landscape unto himself,

moving silent and unmistaken across the globe.

He remembers the sound behind the sound of cheering.

He hears the dust falling through his name.