To Make It
For Mike McCoy
Noiselessly he rants
and rants—I am a dirt-encrusted,
cap-pulled-low, flat-billed,
play-anywhere-but-don’t
help-me-up-after-any
collision, .215-hitting
kind of Double-A ball
player—just taking grounders
at short between
innings. Within
his eastward reaching
stark shadow crossing
honeyed-green outfield
grass of early evening,
I see the blue-black
bruise-hued world of
McGraw, Hornsby, Merkle;
of Cobb, Wagner, Mathewson;
of millions of others newly arrived
who pressed tight into America’s
burst cities, willing
to do most anything
to make it.