point of reference

every time i close my eyes the first few nights following a night of doubleheader ball, i immediately begin to see lights of the field, a single white spec of light rushing out to me becoming a ball; not the one that bruised my sternum on a bad hop last month, not the one that broke my right middle finger two weeks ago and hurts every time i'm in the cages - at bat, but the one i almost caught, the line drive that dropped right and lost its punch while i waited with my glove open and also the bad hop grounder, or the one that found its way right two me as i turned on the base and threw to first for the double play. the victories. the defeats. the learning. the humility that is baseball. only baseball can make me feel the way poetry feels. something almost transcendent, yet shackled by my unleared body. that useless nobility of spirit wanting more than my nerves and muscles have agreed upon. throwing my body in the way of error and hoping for the best.

all of these reasons must contribute to the reason i immediately envision it when i attempt to sleep. i thought of it as i tried to think simultaneously of the threshold between waking and sleeping. the old paradox, or pointless inquiry into conscience. interesting to me this night, however, as i realize exactly where that point was for myself. i thought of the game, but recognized it as a memory, but the moment the memory became more of a focus and stimulus than my immediate surroundings, i moved towards sleep: i responded more directly to an abstract world, than the concrete one. this is also where i love to dwell in poetry. more specifically; my sense of balance became relative strictly to my world view, rather than the laws that govern a common reality. yet i spend my time in this world repeating my mistakes.