Editor’s Note: Chelsea Regoni was winner of the student Sidney Lanier Poetry Award.

by Chelsea Regoni

Consider a group of children herded

beneath the shelter of cameras. Consider

them whipped until baseball diamonds

hide blades of late November’s grass.  A mound

of dirt.  Consider the boy named Andrew

and six children are herded behind painted

lines.  They are the legs of caterpillars

waiting to be fed the dew running across

the seams of fallen baseballs.  Few children

guard diamonds and a plate named home.

Many shape themselves into the field

back there in order to avoid the impact

of strike one, two, three.  They made

it all up and were umpires to a game

they never wanted to play.  Consider the

girl who picked up a club and tasted

the freeze of air as sphere came