The Grapevine Art & Soul Salon
Presentations: Jonathan Knott and Barbara Knott: In Full Swing
The season is here! Barbara and Jonathan are watching the Atlanta Braves with gathering excitement as the team sports new talent on the field. From a moment in present time, Jonathan condenses this:
Jonathan Knott: Throwing the Runner Out
sends jagged shards with wicked edges
throughout infield
coming, cutting divets of sod
humming over blades of grass
(in neat rows like frightened soldiers)
hopping and skipping towards you
and trap the ball, a frightened animal
squeezed close and warm
in the supple padded leather
limbs and sweat flying
legs pumping
cleats spraying mud and chalk
stretched toward you and opened wide
like a carnivorous flower
like a Japanese archer of old
no sights, no sounds
the ball is just…there!
whistles, cheers, stomps, roar
pop glove
a couple of times with your fist
and spit:
Together they chat about the time twenty years ago when they sat with her mother, his grandmother, enjoying her final game before going on to the fields of peace in the Great Beyond. Thinking about how her mother loved baseball and how they lived just behind the mill village baseball park, Barbara falls into a reverie:
Barbara Knott: Rooted Reverie
A hardhit long ball of memory leads me
over a bridge and drops me deep
into a landscape and onto a baseball field
where I roll toward the bleachers to root
for my hometown team, all millworkers
young men with blood of Ireland blended
in their veins like whiskey
with traces of Scottish and Welsh
and even English brew
who
though they bend their backs to industry
will not bend their souls
to any way of life except one full
of passionate attention
to camaraderie in sports
to humor, delight in drink
leanlegged buck-dancing feet
following rhythms of fullthroated
piping and strongfingered strumming
and most of all, to making love.
I am 13 years old and all
the woman I will become hormonally speaking
as I watch these players take the field and measure
with their eye dynamics of pitch and batter and ball
of walks and strikeouts
fair catches and foul balls
double plays and home runs
(punctuated with calls of
Atta Baby! Atta Boy!)
and the occasional bold adjustment
of those covered ones that drive
their passion for competitive sports
as well as romance.
On the magic number three
they come in to line up and drink from the single faucet
rising from the ground
under the cool roof beside me
curved high enough to curl water
across their tongues.
Their musk-scented sweat
stirs my senses, and the metallic taste
of cold water comes to me
like a torrent, a waterfall
in my own throat:
pure sensation, kinetic
experience of men
as wholly other, arousing
my deep desire to embrace
that and all that comes with it.
Aware of me then
the boys smile and nod or tip their caps
and walk back to the dugout
from where they take turns
testing their skills
in the batter's box.
My eyes linger on images
of forearms clutching and swinging
the bat to crack the ball
and legs that run and slide
of bodies rising, smeared with red clay
earthy muscled motion
that captivates my youthful yearnings.
Images of strong arms and deft hands
even now slip past my mature mind
to catch my softness, in fantasies
that let me know
I am still 13, still becoming.
As they watch together the flow of the good game, Jonathan, thinking about their recent trip to Dublin, mentions that sons and daughters of Ireland and Africa have similarly refused to lose their rootedness in passionate living through sport and dance, drink and wit, music and making love. Mother and son revel in the display - not possible when she was 13 and segregation was a trance so deep that white people hardly knew a darker other - of sunkissed skin shaded over time in Spain and Africa and Asia (and aboriginal America where the name of the Atlanta Braves came from), from tan to brown to deepest black, that they can see on bodies not ranged against each other by color but choreographed to blend and bend, retrieve a ground ball, catch a fly, to throw the batter out and then to change places and try for that long ball that might even leave the park and bring someone all the way home.
Copyright 2018, Barbara Knott. All Rights Reserved.