Come I will teach you to dance as naturally as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
– Marge Piercy, “The Cat’s Song”
Languorous and feline the centerfielder stalks the ball, judging its trajectory, like a cheetah weaving through the dry savannah grasses, topaz eyes fixed on its prey. The world silent inside his head, his concentration inviolate, his supple body flowing through the floodlit night, he tracks his quarry, pivoting and gliding to intersect the arc of its flight. He is hunter incarnate, sultan of his domain.
But this time, it seems, the cheetah will be cheated. He has misjudged, moved too slowly; arrogant cat.
Until . . .
With a swiftness that violates time, an instant that bursts inside me and snatches my breath, he is here, and then he is there. Leaping, off balance—but a cat is never off balance—he stretches up a paw of claws sheathed, and the ball, spinning white, drops in.