NIGHT GAME

On this small 

planet streaking 

through time and sky

—telekinesis or

a Feller fastball 

to the moon—

stories, visions, lore

pass from lip 

to hungry lip,

reassure the quaking 

in the stands 

who play their own games 

of choice and chance, 

luck and love, who run 

their aimless course 

toward an ever-

ebbing finish, 

without fans,

ever hoping for 

a score, before 

the light's extinguished.

Greg McBride is the author of Porthole, winner of the 2012 Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry (Briery Creek Press, 2012), and Back of the Envelope, a chapbook (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2009).  His awards include the Boulevard Emerging Poet prize and an Individual Artist Grant in Poetry from the Maryland State Arts Council.  His work appears in Bellevue, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review Online, River Styx, Salmagundi, and Southern Poetry Review. A Vietnam veteran and lawyer, he edits The Innisfree Poetry Journal.