This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of 20 books, and professor of English and creative writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment.
It’s the season for baseball—and poetry. This April, National Poetry month, grab your glove. It’s time to play ball!
“Sown, grown and setting roots in Erie Pennsylvania,” that’s how poet Cee Williams describes himself. He adds, “I spend an inordinate amount of time watching baseball and complaining about the kids in my driveway.” Williams is an avid gardener, devoted dad to a Treeing Walker Coonhound named Ella, as well as a proud uncle and a grateful son. His work has appeared in various chapbooks and publications, including 2 Bridges Review and Kendall Hunt's Composing Poetry: A Guide to Writing Poems and Thinking Lyrically.
Here’s to the poetry of the game! The beauty, the grace, the lurch, the slide, the whoop, the holler, the hope, and—yes—also the cries and sighs from disappointed fans. Today’s poet describes the climb and fall of the 2019 season of the Erie SeaWolves.
Here’s “The Catcher and the Sighs (Erie SeaWolves, 2019)” by Cee Williams.
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We were still in it
right up
— until the final pitch
and then
—the all encompassing banality
set the watchers and casual passengers adrift -
towards
a sea of what-ifs
and there's always next season
only—
next season has yet to arrive
and our catcher
—he died
cracked skull
skateboard riding
above the bluffs at
midnight
or sometime shortly
—after the loss
and the old hometown
— went back to what it always was
a couple stops short of the Majors
Snow Globe champs
Jim Crow Award
yard birds
on hungry nights
no pot hot enough
to take away
the big league chew
and now to fly so—
far away from away
– from such things as last place
only to consecrate the rise with memorialized
—newspaper butterflies
exalting the night
a .200 hitter caught a tired—
extra-inning heater right
in the sweet spot
and we forgot all about –
what it takes
to catch a game
to be the one squatting behind the plate
squinting
—all the better to see the glittering bay
the strength it takes
to make the throw to second plate
to wait for next season
for something—
resembling a new wardrobe
new uniforms
uniform enlightenment
and maybe
just maybe
a lighter load
—at the end of the shovel.
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That was “The Catcher and the Sighs” by Cee Williams. Thanks for listening.
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Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
