Reading Seamus Heaney While Watching Baseball

Funeral in Derry shouldering my father’s casket. Fastball on the outside corner catches the cleanup hitter looking.
Grandfather cuts sod, downing a pint of milk amidst green, rolling fields. Batter tops ball toward third and sprints down one side of the sharp green diamond.
Head swiveling down to book, up to screen.
Heaney conjures gods who live around the corner. I dig fingers in deep peat, smell the sod while today’s gods dance in the outfield in pinstripes.
Thor’s hammer swoops through grey clouds.
Vikings anchor in Galway Bay. White ball flies through blue skies tracked by the outfielder who gloves it at the wall.
My sofa’s a ship flying over the Atlantic back to ancestral sod and peat-roofed huts.
I play catch with leprechauns.
Keep one ear turned to play-by-play.
“Reading Seamus Heaney While Watching Baseball” can be found in Peter M. Gordon’s newest collection of poems Let’s Play Two: Poems About Baseball.

 

About the Poet:
Peter M. Gordon’s poems have appeared in magazines, anthologies and websites, including Slipstream, Journal of Florida Literature, 34th Parallel, Cultural Weekly, and the Sandhill Review. He recently released a chapbook, “Let’s Play Two: Poems about Baseball.” His first collection, Two Car Garage, was published by CHB Media. Peter’s a freelance journalist and sportswriter whose work appeared in over one dozen books and publications ranging from The New York Daily News to the West Orange Times-Observer. Peter lives in Orlando, Florida and teaches in Full Sail University’s Film Production MFA program. Let’s Play Two can be purchased at Amazon.

 

Photo by from Unsplash.

 

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