Just to change the subect a bit, here's one on football which was originally in my first book, Life in the Second Circle. I never had no formal poetry education, so - like most of my poems - this one flows very directly from my own life. Boston area residents - and I assume many others - will recognize the Doug Flutie/Gerard Phelan references. I actually met Phelan on business, and wrote a first draft of the poem the following week and then sat on it for years. He was very much as described, and the last line is a direct quote.
The Man Who Caught the Pass
This is the time of year, year after year,
in the rooms of this winter-dismal city,
when Billy Crowther, slim as a young God,
vanishes himself again and again
into an alien stadium’s twilight, sees
that football arching, arching towards him
and somehow, falling backwards, reaches out
towards blackness, finds and grabs a golden ring,
and ends up on his ass, possessing now
a ball, a game, a life.
............................... You can see it
as often as you want these days on YouTube -
twenty years ago, but always just the same
six seconds on the clock, the team down four,
as legendary Sweeney waves the crowd
to silence, sprints imperiously right
to find a quiet patch of turf, then plants –
and hurls – a sixty-seven yard long lightning bolt, a javelin
that Billy Crowther gathers in, becomes
The-Man-Who-Caught-The-Pass-That-Sweeney-Threw,
and that will be his name
..................................... forevermore.
Sweeney won the Heisman that next week.
It was The Play, they said, The Greatest Pass
That Ever Was. He posed and smiled handsomely,
turned pro, and was a superstar for years,
sold breakfast cereal, and pushed his charities.
Billy Crowther signed a lesser contract,
blew out his knee before the second game
and never played again – a cameo,
a Rosencranz, a Guildenstern, whose role
was simply to be there.
.................................. His job was done.
We wonder what it must be like, at twenty two,
to be so well defined, to spend your life
as anti-climax to an accident –
a safety gets confused, a coverage blown –
that’s all it takes. The Man-Who-Caught-The-Pass
is who you are, and almost every day,
unless you find yourself a mountain-top,
someone will bring it up, and you will smile,
and make a gracious joke, so they can think
how nice he is, The-Man
.......................................Who-Caught-The-Pass.
I met him once on business, recently –
a typical Vice President of Sales –
attentive, friendly, poised and capable;
and realized this was exactly what
he would have been if he had dropped the pass.
There was no tragedy to end the play:
he’d never spiraled downhill, never read
the script, was unaware how things should be.
Our business done, I called out as he left.
He paused, and turned his head.
.............................................“Nice catch,” I said.
|