Outfield

All the youngest said before they got out of the car was,
“I just want to hit it out of here, so far that no one ever gets to find it.”
They were at the local ballparks on a Saturday after the week was plagued
with rainy early days. Things were damp but sunny in between
the clouds that were fewer but still silver, and the wind was like a fear
caught in your mind.

It was the last game of the season, the summer was over,
no more exceptions would be made and all at once
we watched the freedom fall away the way the ash does in a fire.
Everything needs an eye kept on it in order to exist
because of this we welded bleachers out of steel
so we could feel what it was like along the sidelines.

The chain link backstops behind the plates were brown with rust
and bent at the tops, but you could still see through them all up to the sky.
Small business advertisements marked the jerseys of the teams
and they were brighter than the sunlight beams so scattered
just like buckshot from afar.

In the last inning of the night, the older teams all took their bases
upon colliding with a pitch, and as they rounded all the corners
they felt the game go on but knew something was wrong.
This was many of their last moments as players, a final game
when things were still the same, and everyone it seemed was on their side.
The score would be forgotten after the small town records faded in their drawers,
and the lights that filled the field would all be broken
while the diamond disappeared into the landscape.