"Men's League Softball, Gillette, Wyoming"
Out of the broad, open land they come.
Out of a coal seam's
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$hundred-thousand tons
of overburden, out of shit-reek barns
and shearing pens,
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$or down from the powder blue
derrick platforms of howling Cyclone rigs
they rung by rung descend.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$They come bearing the weight
of lives and labor on their boot heels,
a week of night shifts,
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$or the prairie sun's relentless arc.
But here, beneath the lights of Bicentennial Park,
these men work the stiffness
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$**$$$$from their shoulders,
crow-hop and sling the ball sharply
around the horn. No matter
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$who they've become
in the years since boyhood, the game's
muscular beauty remains.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$And the small victories
sustain them—a well-timed swing, or dusty
headfirst-dive for home—
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$as they disband,
again, into the world from which
they take their living.
.
Lucas Howell lives in Gillette, Wyo., where he works in the oil and gas fields of the Powder River Basin. He is a 2007 graduate of the MFA program at the University of Idaho.
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