The Baseball Players
By Donald Hall
Against the bright
grass the white-knickered
players, tense, seize,
and attend. A moment
ago, outfielders
and infielders adjusted
their clothing, glanced
at the sun and settled
forward, hands on knees;
the pitcher walked back
of the hill, established
his cap and returned;
the catcher twitched
a forefinger; the batter
rotated his bat
in a slow circle. But now
they pause: wary,
exact, suspended—
while
abiding moonrise
lightens the angel
of the overgrown
hardens, and Walter Blake
Adams, who died
at fourteen, waits
under the footbridge.
Copyright Credit: Donald Hall, "The Baseball Players" from White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems, 1946-2006. Copyright © 2006 by Donald Hall. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Source: White Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems, 1946-2006 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006)