Signposts and Junctions

Dodgers Clinch the Division

(This poem is dedicated to the great Dodger announcer Vin Scully who, during the division-clinching broadcast said, "Hong Chih Kuo throws hard don't you know.")

Hong Chih Kuo
throws hard
don't you know,
but Chavez Ravine
is no Big Blue Machine,
Dodgers get strikeouts
and surfers
get wipeouts,
summer is over
and Torre can glower
at a defense now porous
and an offense
that's dolorous
while the boo-birds
sing the chorus,
5 losses a stench
hope 's riding
the bench,
no time to be cocky,
a Colorado Rocky
waits at the plate
to seal the fate
of Dodger blue
that has bled
on the diamond,
it's said.

A season unraveled,
Manny's dreadlocked
in battle
with a bat that
seems addled,
time for the death-knell
to rattle
when all of
a sudden
a wild seventh inning
sends my head spinning,
thunder is thudding
and balls are
now scudding
down lines and in alleys,
lightning cracks
in the valley
as the Dodgers
now rally.

Hope has returned
and the blackness now burns,
the crowd is aroaring,
the stadium soaring,
a singular vision,
Dodgers clinch
the division.

October 3, 2009