Football Poems

In the huddle you said “Go long—get open”
and at the snap I took off along the right sideline
and then cut across left in a long arc

                                      my
friends and I would watch them
from my porch, books of poems
lost in our laps

intoning inscrutable stanzas
as halfbacks and tackles
made out, Friday nights after football

The ball flew up toward day
and landed in night.

Down the block we bend with the season:
shoes to polish for a big game,
storm windows to batten or patch.

                                        i thought
that i would make a fine football-playing   
poet, but now i know

Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.

                       Even practice could be fun—
                   The way, say, even sepia photgraphs of old-time
                       All Americans could be pirates' gold

                                                One has certain responsibilities,
one has to make choices. This isn’t right and I'm not going
to throw it.

No one was faster
than my father on the football field.

They have Immortals in a Hall of Fame,
They have the stories of the tribe, the plays
And instant replays many times replayed.

our high school quarterback become a clerk—

in the high sense.

Any minute—no guessing what might trigger it—
he could be butting your face mask and barking up your
nostrils

When I woke, I found myself crying out
Latin conjugations, and the new snow falling
At the edge of a green field.

New Arkansas Razorback linebacker Vin Ascolese pens a poem called “The Razorback” for his team.

Over at Culture Bully, Judy Mills muses and amuses on an all-poetry fantasy football team.

Ferlinghetti’s renewed love for the San Francisco 49ers.