Matt Stairs Can't Stop Hitting Home Runs
by Derek Godin
It's a balmy evening in Fredericton
and Matt Stairs can't stop hitting home runs.
He simply cannot help it. He's taking
batting practice in his backyard, and long
winding fly balls flow from his arms
in perfect parabola the universe usually
reserves for bent light and bottle rockets.
Double automata on the diamond;
the machine lobbing perfect pitch after
perfect pitch, and the maestro conducting
contact with a Bunyanesque baton
of now-endangered American ash;
he's older now but the muscles remember,
they twitch as they still must and always will.
The only other people within a county mile
of home plate are a couple of kids, fumbling
with their dad's camcorder, trying the get
the white balance right in the hopes of bootlegging
the exploits of the Happy Sisyphus, the Colossus of Clutch,
hoping to see a glint of his World Series ring
even as a fuzzy speck in the lens.
Sometimes there is poetry to the platitudes
printed on t-shirts; i.e. "in case of emergency,
use Stairs," climb to victory on the back of
the man several St. Peters have deemed unworthy
of baseball's pantheon, but great is the man
who becomes a god only when he needs to,
and only for as long as it requires.
