Two boys run wildly from base to base, their hair stuck to their foreheads with sweat.
One is large, one small.
They play furiously, like Aztecan warriors golden brown.
A mother's limp pleas fall to the earth like noodles, sticky and useless.
They will not come home, not now.
They kick and rail, stirring the brown earth to life.
Elbows and knees pay the price, a day's work apparent in the holes.
The tiny drops loosed during their ritual purify the soil, and they dance.
Rumble.
Rumble.
It is working. They can hear.
Rumble.
Eyes cast up, they raise their arms in tribute.
One, two, three, ten thousand.
A smile to cleanse this damn world's palate.
And the mother, towels in hand, swoops in like a hen to collect her chicks.
