POETRY JAM = SPORTS

Being on vacation and too brain-dead chasing toddlers in swimming pools to write poetry, I thought I would miss this week but when I saw the theme for the Monday Jam was "sports" an old poem from 2008 came to mind.  I apologize for continuing to ransack my archives but I think I used to actually write poems back then and I'm discovering that I have a real insecurity about getting back in the game.

I sometimes wonder these days if I have anything left to say.  But I suppose I will surprise myself.  I think I used to wonder the same thing in 2008.  I guess it is always a surprise.  You look in the empty room of your brain and nothing is there -- but if you relax and keep looking things begin to appear.  Magic. 

Anyhow, here is my sports oriented poem --

     Fourth and Inches

Why is everything, now, fourth and inches,

from planning dinner on the phone

to sitting on the couch, our legs almost touching,

watching the evening news.

Whoever has the ball, predictably,

will take it up the middle

against a goal line stand of determined eyes

behind a face masked in steel,

legs churning mud that only grows deeper

with each collision, which might be sport

except we wear no pads

and bleed too much behind the scars. 

It might make sense

if either of us lined up near a goal

instead of the middle of the field,

or if a yard of mud had any worth,

or if we had not once

been on the same team.