Fourth of July   Colorado Rockies 6 SF Giants 1 @ Coors Field All-Star Break  July 10th-12th Rockies @ 44 - 43 / .506 Congrats to Brian Fuentes, Matt Holliday National League All-Stars
		Vintage Colorado Poetry Poem of the Week July 3 & 10, 2006
	Baseball is at midseason. Denver poet laureate Chris Ransick's "When We Win the Little League Game" takes place on a barn-burner of a Front Range afternoon.
			When We Win the Little League Game It's 96, the field's as hard and dry as sandstone in noon sun. The parents of the other team clean fangs with splintered bats, deep guttural sounds spill from the shade underneath the trees. The umpire's a sportscaster from Channel 9, or used to be, before the bald spot grew too obvious. The scorched crows in the cottonwoods call phrases from Ty Cobb's book, hook slide with cleats high, until the players take the field, mostly cherubs with small gloves, the catcher's thick glasses glinting behind his mask. Second base may explode, the bleachers may combust spontaneously, no doubt the game would still take place. It takes the heart of a kid to cut through all this crap. Maybe he makes a diving stop at short and throws the runner out to the cheer that will not be suppressed, so sudden and sincere a joy it sparks the crows off perches into the sun where they whirl up above the players leaping on pitcher's mound. --Chris Ransick-- Reprinted from Never Summer: Poems from Thin Air by Chris Ransick Pronghorn Press, 2002 Copyright 2002, by Chris Ransick Used with the author's permission. Home // Archives // Previous Poem of the Week