Posted in Passages

Footfall

Posted on by tq1695

He was the star of team,
our high school –
a bona fide footballing supernova,
blazing a trail of failed tackles
rampant in all the grades
big things possible, probable, no certain.
I’d never seen anyone move like him –
it was almost impossible to lay a hand on him
his torso was there, and then it wasn’t.

Footwork – almost non-existent
a video should be made of him.
It was
they learned to take his ankles
he was finished – two years out of high school.

Advertisement

Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.