June 23, 2020

who is left holding the peanuts * 

We weren’t thinking who’d been hawking cold beer or sugary dots on waxed paper.
We’d forgotten about anyone poised over a hot spit where blush-colored frankfurters 
spun endlessly on skewers. We hadn’t considered those able-bodied climbers with
coolers at their backs and holsters of popcorn at their hips. We were only feeling the 
eerie quiet of the pitch, struck mute by the span of empty seats, wistful for uniforms 
and the sight of players fanning out into the field, organ music piping in dramatically, 
the warm, buzzy camaraderie of that stretch at the middle of every seventh inning.
In cold storehouses across North Carolina, the orphans of the season’s harvest
lie in stoic piles. Someone is looking at a spreadsheet, his collar rimmed with sweat.
In yards across America, children are still lifting bats to their shoulders, aiming at stars.

This poem is inspired by this article in the NY Times.