Hello once again.  Since I last checked in there has been a lot of change, but ultimately more of the same.  We have basically split our games over the last ten days, but as we have won and lost so has everybody else in the Texas League South so at present we still maintain the three game lead we had a week and a half ago.  We have one more game against Northwest Arkansas tonight (followed by an awful 12 hour bus trip), but then we have fourteen games against the other teams in our division so we definitely need to put the pedal down and put some distance between ourselves and second place to ensure we make the playoffs.  Personally, I have had a few good outings and one horrendous outing since I last logged on.  Obviously having poor outings is not great and I would prefer not to have them, but there isn’t much to be done except keep plugging along and finish the season strong.  The prospect of making the playoffs is definitely a motivating factor for me and hopefully that can help drive me to a strong end of the regular season and a good performance in the playoffs.

 

Away from the field I have been dedicating a lot of time to searching for a job to occupy my time during the offseason.  I have also started working on the two classes I will be taking during the fall semester, but which unfortunately will overlap the end of the season and eat up most of my free time until then.  I have had the opportunity to do quite a bit of reading in Norton’s Anthology of Modern Poetry and a couple of Stephen Dunn books that I picked up recently.  In the interest of being prepared, I have been spending some time planning out my trip home at the end of the season so I can have it done and out of the way and just focus on baseball for now.  I’m trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to work a return trip to Guadalupe Mountains National Park into my drive home so I can hike the Devil’s Hall trail, which I missed out on last time and really want to see.  Hopefully I’ll be able to work it in, but I am not hopeful.  Anyhow, I’ll call that good for now since I don’t have a whole lot to write about and leave you with a couple poems for your trouble.  Enjoy.

 

Temper

by Beth Bachmann

 

Some things are damned to erupt like wildfire,

 

windblown, like wild lupine, like wings, one after

 

another leaving the stone-hole in the greenhouse glass.

 

Peak bloom, a brood of blue before firebrand.

 

And though it is late in the season, the bathers, also,

 

obey. One after another, they breathe in and butterfly

 

the surface: mimic white, harvester, spot-celled sister,

 

fed by the spring, the water beneath is cold.

 

 

Graves We Filled Before the Fire

by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

 

Some lose children in lonelier ways:

tetanus, hard falls, stubborn fevers

 

that soak the bedclothes five nights running.

Our two boys went out to skate, broke

 

through the ice like battleships, came back

to us in canvas bags: curled

 

fossils held fast in ancient stone,

four hands reaching. Then two

 

sad beds wide enough for planting

wheat or summer-squash but filled

 

with boys, a barren crop. Our lives

stripped clean as oxen bones.