Men's League Softball, Gillette, Wyoming

Out of the broad, open land they come.
Out of a coal seam's
$!
hundred-thousand tons

of overburden, out of shit-reek barns
and shearing pens,

or down from the powder blue

derrick platforms of howling Cyclone rigs
they rung by rung descend.

They come bearing the weight

of lives and labor on their boot heels,
a week of night shifts,

of the prairie sun's relentless arc.

But here, beneath the lights of Bicentennial Park,
these men work the stiffness

from their shoulders,

crow-hop and sling the ball sharply
around the horn. No matter

who they've become

in the years since boyhood, the game's
muscular beauty remains.


-- Lucas Howell











This is Lucas at the right.
My apologies to him for the wrong formatting of his
poem. Blogger won't let me justify the single lines.
They're supposed to be over to the right.

You can see the original formatting here.
You can read his Primitive Road here.


Today's Poetry Friday is being hosted at music-loving Kelly Polark at her blog here.

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