TEAM FLAME, A Hermit Crab Essay in a Baseball Lineup Card

A Hermit Crab Essay, Nine At-Bats in a Lineup Card

Pregame Notes, Game One.

Some batters arrive at the plate carrying heft. Some bring grace. Some survive enough innings to become myth. They’re all here and part of Team Flame. Nine batters in burnings and meditations, spirits and fires, spectacles and labors, longings and memories.

They are dangerous

poetic

beautiful.

Bodies on fire, smoking bats.
Arms on fire, blazing flames.

At the plate: combustions, strikeouts, and arguments over “the call.” Baseball has its injustices. Some pitches catch too much plate. Others miss by a whisper but are called strikes.

In baseball, and in writing, everyone makes judgments, but only the umpire’s call, or writer’s call matters. On the field, they’re getting ready: Hannibal is hunkered behind home plate, Stokes and Poe linger near the foul lines at first and third. Rae and Anora watch from the deep outfield corners, and Charlie, the bat boy, carries good luck lumber through hits, outs, and dust. Leftie, Tommy, and Cory, arms in the bullpen, wait their turn.

Batters step into the box beneath stadium lights and desert stars. Some swing wildly; some bunt and disappear into dust; some wait and walk; and some return to the dugout looking as though they’d seen seen a ghost.

And everywhere, on the field and off the field, a steady dialogue is pitched between grace and judgment, foul balls and home runs, a forest fire and a campfire.

Which flame bats first?

Coming tomorrow, leadoff batter, number 11, Left Fielder, Windburn.

^{Burning excerpts from Stories Emerge Like Bears, a Cornerstone Press forthcominglyric memoir in 2028 exploring wilderness, memory, labor, rhythm, motorcycles, drumming, fire, and the sacred atmospheres and languages of place}.