Long-On

A famous big hitter in cricket

Hit his cover drive into the thicket

     Where girls tanned in the nude

     And no gent would intrude,

But Long-on was on a good wicket.

—Douglas Catley

Fielding at Long-on, a ruminant admires

the valley of eucalyptus ficifolia in full flower.

1

Long on detail, short

On operational procedure to contain them,

For someone supposedly fielding

In some outfield that will be forever

Offlimits, this vista should beguile the over

With sky motes and beams falling.

2

Long on the minds of that ruminant

Is the untoward forwardness

Of many items in the visual field

Under the lofted sunshower:

The flowering trees towering in the valley,

The persuasively cloudless horizon.

3

Long held notions of grace – such as

The passage of a wake

In ringlets along the furrowing bow –

Propose events at whose horizon

As it were (always as it were),

Someone is running in to bowl.

4

Longinus on the Sublime

Might well have noted the vista from here,

A valley of blossoming eucalypt canopies,

Acres of crimson cauliflower,

And leaned into the wind

And missed any number of overthrows.

5

He, that nominal fielder at Long-on,

Student of foliage, registrar of stasis,

Might between overs puzzle over

Elizabeth Bishop’s favourite lines of her own:

“All the untidy activity continues

Awful but cheerful.”

6

A she-oak at Long-on

Appears to be well within the boundary

Which is, it must be conceded,

Uncertainly marked out with white flags.

It (the she-oak) is a shady lady

Beautiful but indifferent to the game.

7

Long ago this part of the outfield

Was a cold swimming-pool

Fed by mountain springs,

Then was levelled and grassed,

Perhaps at the time this she-oak took root

Where swimmers dived and surfaced.

8

He has become forgetful, this observer,

Musing on the old joke: a musical umpire

Sings to a famous melody

“After this ball it’s over”

And when over is called, unnoticed,

He stays on longer at Long-on.

9

The longstanding late afternoon light

Draws him increasingly to the valley

And away from the distant batsman

So that he finds himself

Confronted by canopy upon canopy

In a procession of raised torches.

10

Long overdue, a change in bowling;

A pullover is handed to someone

And white trousers run up in the remote

Distant motes and beams.

Long-on is undisturbed and on

The point of strolling towards the she-oak.

11

In the she-oak’s curtained shade

Within the uncertain boundaries,

A gingham picnic is underway

As over is called. Mothers and children,

A cloth spread on the ground, suggestions

Of a modest Lunch on the Grass.

12

The batsman at the other end

Is preparing to take strike.

A general migration has crisscrossed the pitch.

Even plovers tiptoe in the outfield.

Only Long-on seems rooted to the spot,

A sap-shoot of the she-oak, gazing.

13

Grazing, he is musing over extremes,

Amongst them children’s unidiomatic “translations”

Into French, e.g. sur la façon maison

For on the way home.

He feels similarly displaced and homeless, forgetting

And forgotten out here on the boundary.

14

The cloned eucalypt canopies

Like a curd of eddying weir foam;

Below them fronds and ferns;

And that’s only the foreground –

Little wonder that he has his back

To whoever plays a straight bat down the line.

15

And closer by far than where the action is

The valley offers an array of strokes:

Lanceolate, pinnate, palmate, trifoliate –

And that’s only where the ball whistles overhead,

Bypassing Long-on,

To be caught by a picnicker.

16

What epiphanies come unbidden

When one is half hidden fielding in shadow?

A squall of rapid pursuit birds

Flies into the arms of the she-oak

Followed by a listening silence...

Then he is distracted, dreaming again.

17

In a vacancy far from the middle

He is considering the children’s riddle

In the flare of the flowering trees:

Four blackbirds sitting on a fence,

One is shot. How many are left?

Answer: None. The others flew away.

18

And the celebrated Steinberg perspective,

New York in detail and, in the distance, Russia,

Suggests his position here:

He is in his own snowbound, blossoming Russia,

Remote from the batsmen who run a leg bye

In expansive Manhattan sunlight.

19

Longeurs of rose papaya,

Long sunlit shafts through the canopy,

Longings for his own efflorescence

In the face of eucalyptus ficifolia folios,

While far away the bails

Tremble but manage not to fall.

John Watson