-inside the game / a baptism of sorts-

my first time at bat, away,–– in a real game

with uniforms, with people in the stands, with umpires, three of them,

and grass in the outfield, with two parishes face-to-face,––

( Espirito Santo Church

representing the fierce Portuguese

deeply set into the land east-by-south at the banks

of their length of the river, swift and dark,

as foreign as the Azores from which their fathers came,

where grapes were cultivated and potatoes

farmed with the stern expression of Jesus on their skins,

and Holy Rosary Church representing the Italian community

set at the banks of its length of the river, swift and dark, but lighter

as we were held to imagine, with a sense of isolated visitation )

I struck-out on three pitches; the first two

swung-on and missed, the third leaving me flat-footed

with the bat's barrel circling over my left shoulder

no more than the amputee of a distant tree,

and this ballplayer standing alone at the plate,

a plate as unknown to him as a simmering pig's foot, with hard-

learned lessons in the consequence of taking a pitch down-the-middle

as well as the understanding in the consequence of geography.