Nationwide Hankering on a Saturday in Fall
No ticket takers wait at the gates.
The marching bands have stayed away,
even the drum majors too diverted
to finish changing into their uniforms.
The cheerleaders cavort somewhere else.
Somehow the special-team players
maintain the discipline to assume
their positions on the field, their coaches
and teammates irked with themselves
for showing up, the football upright
on the tee, the referee kissing his whistle
as if it were his wife’s responsive tongue.
All the tiered seats remain vacant,
every loyal fan at home in bed
or out of sight in a tent uphill
from the hiking trail or down
in the lower stacks of the library
or in a discount-store dressing room
or—denial turning to urgency—
on one of the cleared backseats
in the all-but-empty stadium lot…
The kick-off returner does his duty
but fantasizes about what he’s missing
when he catches the ball. He’s hugged
to the ground just shy of the fifteen
by an opponent who’s slow to get off.
Unlucky sportscasters and their shrinking crews
watch the game—their only viewers a few
of the prepubescents of the countless parents
who found no sitters available but TV.
Offensive holding occurs on every play
and, with the miserable officials never throwing a flag,
every possession’s sustained into a scoring drive.
| William Aarnes |
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