Softball

Softball

The English Department crawls through the grass,
the summer softball game stalled.

A professor has lost his wedding ring. The grad
student (an Americanist, Melville,

Hawthorne) lobbed the pitch toward him.
The professor swung, made

contact, stumbled onto first base. We’ll still win,
the girl on first taunted, a third

year Foucauldian. Gathering her hair in one hand,
she slid the band from her wrist

around the hair, secured it against her neck. The man
waited, bending his knees as if to test

that the ground could hold him. It was then that he saw
his ring finger, empty. By sunset,

the Department is still on its knees, staring into the lawn,
consoling, Don’t worry, we’ll find it.