TAGGING UP AT SECOND

TAGGING UP AT SECOND

By James Scruton

As with so many things, the waiting
is hardest, toeing the bag
as if testing its temperature.
 
Tell yourself you won’t look back
for once, won’t try to gauge that slow arc,
the ball taking its own sweet time,
 
its rainbow’s end on the warning track
in right. Instead, focus on the coach at third,
his arm high as a starter’s flag
 
for your revving engine until,
despite everything, you steal
a single glance behind,
 
glimpse leather snapping shut
out there and you’re off, alive
for another ninety feet.

James Scruton is the author of two full collections and five chapbooks of poetry, most recently The Rules (Green Linden Press, 2019). He has work appearing in current issues of Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review, and The MacGuffin, among other journals. He is currently Professor of English and Associate Academic Dean at Bethel University in McKenzie, Tennessee.

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