Spring Training

-- Dave Sims

“I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;”
       --Wallace Stevens

My colleague laughs behind his pipe and tells me
all about the flock of doves he saw this morning, 
gliding in lazy, concentric circles, their white feathers
catching his eye as he lectured to bored students
about the meaning and value of poetry. “Look at that!”

he had to pause halfway through his windup
into Stevens’ “Sunday Morning,” and motion
toward the window where—for an instant, at least—
they all just had to watch for a while as a flock
of something true and simple moved against

winter’s pale grey sky. All right, I’m stretching
the truth here—he wasn’t teaching Stevens,
or at least not the poem whose imagery aligns
so well with what he’d witnessed. “But it doesn’t
stop there,” he says, smiling as he tamps down

his tobacco, and from there everything else
he said is true, I take it: “I go home and my wife
tells me to put on ESPN. She doesn’t say why.
But then I see a clip of Randy Johnson down
at camp. Turns out he hurled a 100-mph fastball

and hit a pigeon. Looked just like a pillow exploding
on the screen.” He shook his head. I shook mine.
I mean, what do you say to something like that?
When asked, the pitcher muttered, “Shit happens,”
but I can’t help but wonder what Stevens might

have said, or that perhaps he already did.
Because even though our inevitable destruction
is always just that simple, I like to think there’s
a little something more besides “the leaves/
of sure obliteration on our paths.” 

For Ed: 4.2.01

"An Autumn Rain." Antietam Review. Washington County Arts Council. Hagerstown, MD:  Spring 1995.

"Babe." Many Mountains Moving. Boulder, CO: March 1995.

Intrusions and Lassitude. Poetry Chapbook. New Spirit Press. Kew Gardens, NY: Summer 1994.

"Riding with The Cook." Rhino. Evanston, IL: Fall 1993.

"The Carcass." Antietam Review. Washington County Arts Council. Hagerstown, MD: Spring  1991.

"Dogbeak." Karamu. Eastern Illinois University. Charleston, Illinois: Spring 1991.

"His Daughter's Horses." South Dakota Review. Univ. of South Dakota. Vermillion, SD:  Autumn 1990.