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Phillies 10, Cardinals 7
(July 27, 1993)
.
Deep summer:
the city steams.
We, sixty thousand strong,
turn a corner and stride
smack into the middle
of a pennant race. Tonight
my brand new business suit
melts into a puddle on the floor,
I wrap my hair in an old bandanna,
I sink anonymous, delirious into the crowd–
and the crowd is steaming
with all manner of excess:
.
Beaudacious muchachos–
lean and fine, ripple
in earrings and chains–
boozy they strut, bob and weave
their way, up the stadium precipice
to their seats.
.
In the third inning they strip off their shirts
and commence to rhythmic stomping
on those rusted metal benches in the bleachers
.
While security wonders what to do,
that rhythm undulates through us,
becomes itself anonymous
as it reaches the box seats
where toes tap as we
score and score and score and score.
.
By the fifth, we are as ghosts–
fiercely joined with everything:
crowd, game and jet black sky.
.
I know I am at home here,
at home in this chaos,
in this beauty,
in this closeness
to the edge of danger.
.
What would my bosses think
as I howl victorious
at a ninth inning moon,
both fists clenched against the night–
wild, bearded, so much at home
in this festival, this carnival,
at home at last in this city
.
of my birth.
.
Bill Van Buskirk lives in Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania. His poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, The Paterson Literary Review, LIPS, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, Parting Gifts, and The Mad Poets’ Review. He has received two Pushcart nominations. His chapbook, Everything that’s Fragile is Important, received an honorable mention in the Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook contest (2007). His book, This Wild Joy that Thrills Outside the Law, won the Joie de vivre contest sponsored by the Mad Poets’ Review (2010). His latest book is The Poet’s Pocket Guide to Steady Employment.
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North of Oxford 