Extending Her Contract

Milton Jordan

March 31, 2024

The Botanist on a Visiting Assistant 

Professor contract who shared our small 

Science Center office held a particular

interest in the regional grasses

covering our campus along a minor

tributary feeding the lower Brazos

and we asked her to focus that interest

on the thin grass cover of our infield.

What you have here, she said, is a hopeless case.

Without a total recomposition

this alkaline soil cannot support

the Coastal Bermuda you’re using

and Johnson Grass will take over in bunches

leading your best infielders to transfer.

She could not, though, resist the challenge,

and brought us, a week later, soil formulas,

contractors’ estimates with projected

schedules and her contract extension request.

Work began under her supervision

in early January and the Pirate

Nine played that season on a ragged 

city park field with loud visitor complaints.

A year later, after fall ball in the park

and February on the road, we started March

with a smiling shortstop fielding a clean

ground ball off her well-manicured green infield, 

an inning-ending double play, our Botanist 

exclaiming, This is a beautiful game! 

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.