The Baseball Lesson in August Wilson’s Fences
Baseball can teach you the cruelest of lessons, just like America.
Josh Gibson could hit farther and better than any ballplayer
There ever was, white or black.
Better than even Babe Ruth,
And certainly Jackie Robinson, but it don’t matter,
Because America is as unfair as a broken foul pole.
I done see a hundred colored players better than Jackie Robinson.
And that he was the first colored ballplayer
To make it to the big leagues is a lesson;
That’s America teaching me things ain’t always worth waitin’ for;
What good does that boy being in Brooklyn do for Cool Papa Bell,
Or the daughter of Josh Gibson, who got rags on her feet?
If Death is a fastball on the outside corner,
So lightning quick you can’t even square up against him,
Then America is even worse; it’s a big, looping knuckler.
Just when they got me swinging so hard at this softball,
It changes up on ya in a mean, uncertain way; and that’s cruel.
Makes me want to pack up my dreams and bat and glove and go home…
Of all the days in the year, the slaves dread New Year’s day the worst or any
-Lewis Clark, “Leaves from a Slave’s Journal of Life”
In Attendance of the Watch Night Service
There were about 20ish minutes before the start of a new year,
And my mother, so enraptured by the sermon and chorus,
Didn’t nudge me as my drool ran down my Sunday best
As I inadvertently fell asleep, like the disciples in Gethsemane.
I was awakened by the pastor who had caught the Spirit,
And was yelling and running up and down the aisle
Like he was being chased by a hellhound,
But really, only one of the senior deacons was after him,
Carrying a towel to drape over the reverend, like one of the J.B.’s,
Who put a cape on James Brown to cool him down.
I watch from my pew, groggy and stifling yawns,
My mother and other older churchgoers, get up and sway and move,
Because of the Lord, and because it was a dance of liberty,
Like the ones our ancestors move to on the first watch night service,
Hours before the first day of that special new year,
When freedom, that terribly, beautiful thing, was finally in reach,
And the auction block never felt more powerless,
And the hope that families would be spared
From being fractured into fragments as business transactions,
Never felt more possible.
They dance because of the Lord, and because of the ancestors.
When The Hurricane Passed: Rubin Carter
Hearing that the Hurricane had passed,
One did not need to have been in the eye of the storm
To know that all things had not been settled.
Out in some prison cell, somewhere,
An innocent man bangs at the wall until his knuckles bleed,
And yells into the ether until he is breathless, and his legs are heavy,
Pleading for one more shot,
In tribute to Rubin Carter…
Matthew Johnson is the author of the poetry collections, Shadow Folks and Soul Songs (Kelsay Books), Far from New York State (New York Quarterly Press), and the chapbook, Too Short to Box with God (Finishing Line Press). His work has appeared in The London Magazine, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. He has received Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominations, as well as received recognitions from the Hudson Valley Writers Center, Sundress Publications, and Grand View University. He’s the managing editor of The Portrait of New England and poetry editor of The Twin Bill. https://www.matthewjohnsonpoetry.com/.
