Caught looking
A poem
By David Beebe
Beneath Broken Arrow power lines,
Drummond Island in damp knee-high grass,
Croton and Henning Park, warmed in last
light; the ball turns purplish orange with
short tosses upward before it lands in soft
leather, like the fitted glide of putting on
Sunday shoes. I love the motion, the rhythm,
the movement of the seams – spinning, floating,
dancing, guided by higher, misunderstood things.
Deer watch from the edge of left field as coyotes
canter in right, in royal view of the town water
tower across the river, last in feeling the sun,
framed in center. Practicing our knuckles and
curves like boys who never wandered into the
woods, never stared down wolves in new darkness.