Chris Ellery
November 8, 2026
after reading “National Poetry Month Opened on Opening Day” by Milton Jordan
In baseball, every action is competition—
pitcher against hitter, fielder against runner.
Depending on the count, a foul ball
wins the pitch for the pitcher or the batter.
A balk, a bunt, a called third strike,
a stolen base, a walk-off homer—
one player always wins, another loses.
I think because he longed for a field
of just one side, Milton wrote poetry
between the innings of keeping score.
His pencil was not a bat to use for beating.
He knew the worth of art is not to win
but wake. And so his lines turn loss to gain
and pain into the bliss of revelation.
This happens between the bottom
and the top. Creation space (he saw it
in Isaiah), where victory does not depend
on someone losing, where another’s sadness
is not the price of one side’s celebration,
where no scorer tallies outs and errors,
where goats and leopards play in peace together.
Chris Ellery is the author of six poetry collections, most recently One Like Silence and Canticles of the Body. A longtime professor of English at Angelo State University, now retired, he is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, the Fulbright Alumni Association, and Phi Kappa Phi.
