Football Rebound - Nancy Cavers Dougherty

[Lawrence Robinson]

Football Rebound

Certain words come to mind, may I, this Sunday?
>From stadium seat, glare of insight pours over me.
I say it's not unreasonable, if I may comment, that #77
over there, on the football field, far right, might be
a bully, might be singling out #9, this cold noon.

Crows see us as anything but flockless numbers
maybe more like ants from their mega-view. Sort of
a God's eye but crowlike-beady what does God's eye
look like? To the Calvinists or to Calvin & Hobbes?
Kind? Bemused? Accusatory? Black and unblinking?

Face paint on cheeks on torsos under Analy Tiger sky, 
teens watch from the bleachers cheering, dancing, 
flirting. Strolling by, in twos and threes, mouths
gum-packed. I want to say smacking. But not
the sunflowers this morning their yellow heads, 

drooped to ground. What hand can you offer under 
a merciless sun upon us like a magnifying glass? 
I want to know, what do they do the mothers and babies
digging under cyclone fences, crossing into strange
fields of neighbors who tote AK47s. Too late 

in the season to change the rules, not yet September. 
There too, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary, hardly greener.
Or Crimea. Really? Really? shouts the father next to us,
to another bad call from the rep. It's a foul and I overhear 
two men talking, "He was the worst player." Which one?

	- Nancy Cavers Dougherty