Pitch

It’s another one of those English
Monosyllables, our friend the pitch,

With a dozen-plus definitions
Skittering in divergent meanings,

And not even the Mandarin trick
Of distinct tones to sort out the puns.

The pitch for a film, pitch of a voice,
The pitch sticky, black, resinous tar,

The pitch of a roof or a hawk’s climb,
The pitch that’s a playing field, the pitch

Thrown from the mound on baseball diamonds,
The distance between a cog-wheel’s teeth,

The density of typed characters,
The tumbling or oscillating pitch,

The pitch that is the absence of light,
Etc. and etc.,

The pitch. Its usages are the ghosts
That throng that syllable of the pitch,

That meet at the crossroads of the pitch,
That lure your meanings onto the pitch,

Your poor meanings, your faint attentions
At the mouth of their pitch-dark caverns.