Ronald Wallace

FIELDING

I like to see him out in center field
fifty years ago, at twenty-two,
waiting for that towering fly ball—
August, Williamsburg, a lazy afternoon—
dreaming how he'd one day be a pro
and how he'd have a wide-eyed son to throw
a few fat pitches to. An easy catch.
He drifts back deeper into a small patch

of weeds at the fence and waits. In a second or two
the ball is going to stagger in the air,
the future take him to his knees: wheelchair,
MS, paralysis, grief. But for now
he's camped out under happiness. Life is good.
For at least one second more he owns the world.

(from Long for this World: New & Selected Poems,
University of Pittsburgh Press)

LOCAL HERO

My nickname, growing up, was "Rusty" Wallace—
the same as the race car driver by that name
who roars across the headlines of
The Saint Louis Post Dispatch:
RUSTY WALLACE TRIUMPHS
or WALLACE WINS AGAIN.
Oh! say the little old ladies at my mother's church
who remember that small boy fondly—
Joseph in the Christmas pageant,
towing his squeaky donkey down the aisle;
altar boy in surplice and muffled silly grin;
soprano in the choir loft spinning out
his tinny solos in the high compression air—Oh!
You must be proud of him! Such an illustrious career!
The grueling work he's doing so very dangerous!
All that power and speed, the terrible crashes!
She used to try to explain it wasn't me
on those oversize tires, athwart that throbbing
engine, the packed house hoping for a victory or
a crack-up. How I drove only the smaller vehicles—
sonnets and sestinas, villanelles,
though I'd been known
to hazard a bit of fast talk, take a joy ride in
free verse. But they'd have nothing of it: Oh my,
you're much too modest. We've seen him race.
On track that man is . . . is . . . pure poetry!
Him and his whole pit crew!
So now my mother smiles and acquiesces: Yes,
her son's a winner, after all. And when, on
Easter Sunday, I'm back to visit from
wherever their cheering imaginations would have it,
the aging pastor driving
his old slow message home
about how we'll all be resurrected
at the finish line one day
if we power up our lives with
the high octane of prayer,
his metaphor a nod in my direction,
and I feel all eyes on me,
I'm Rusty Wallace, local hero, NASCAR bard
extraordinaire, fastest goddamn poet on the track!

(from Long for this World: New & Selected Poems,
University of Pittsburgh Press)

Blessings

occur.
Some days I find myself
putting my foot in
the same stream twice;
leading a horse to water
and making him drink.
I have a clue.
I can see the forest
for the trees.

All around me people
are making silk purses
out of sows' ears,
getting blood from turnips,
building Rome in a day.
There's a business
like show business.
There's something new
under the sun.

Some days misery
no longer loves company;
it puts itself out of its.
There's rest for the weary.
There's turning back.
There are guarantees.
I can be serious.
I can mean that.
You can quite
put your finger on it.

Some days I know
I am long for this world.
I can go home again.
And when I go
I can
take it with me.

(from Long for this World: New & Selected Poems,
University of Pittsburgh Press)

Ronald Wallace is a professor of English and Poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, American Poetry Review, The Paris Review, and others. His latest collection of poems is Long for this World: New & Selected Poems.

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