Al Ortolani

Beating It Out

They say in baseball that
diving into first base is slower
than legging out the throw.
It’s been timed, put
to the stopwatch again and again,
but in that last moment
with the ball in the air,
the shortstop’s whip of an arm
snapping the diamond,
there’s this impulse to fly
to the bag, one dive, one leap,
a helmet clattering inside out hope.
It’s nearly uncontrollable
this final belief that leaving the earth
is faster than digging down the baseline.
We know the science,
having studied the exclamation point
in the coaching report, the risk
to hands and fingers, shoulders
and head, the first baseman
stretching the truth of his glove 
to beat us out.

Al Ortolani’s most recent poetry collection is Controlled Burn, published by Spartan Press in 2024. His first novel Bull in the Ring was recently released by Meadowlark Books in 2023. His poetry has been featured in the American Life in Poetry, the Writers Almanac, and numerous literary magazines. He was a 2019 recipient of the Rattle Chapbook Prize.