-It’s good enough / A love poem to a baseball-

Columbus Park / the early years.

We can look it over

from now to doomsday

It'll still be good enough, or

we can all go home.

We're out here

long beyond our limits

and if we don't play,

it's not a happy ending.

I remember this baseball.

Pieroni fished it out from the sewer

across the street last week.

Tony Scelsi dried it out in his basement,

wrapped inside a nabbed blanket like a bunting.

Now it’s the one we have.

The streetlights are getting ready to inhale

to the color of amber.

The bat in my hand is the preferred ash 29.

“I like the light ones”.

Cinquini yells: “No Chips”! as if it was personal.

Gasperini yells: "Play Ball"!

And why not?

It’s beaten and scarred and smells like a sewer,

but it's the one we have, and it's good enough.
They're always good enough.

Quequechan / 1953