by Martha Deed
I played my clarinet in the rain
and prayed Roger Brown wouldn't drown
from a tackle on Pearl River’s muddy field
that the Nyack Indians would prevail again
And when I outgrew the band
I did not outgrow my pleasure in a game
that let me stare at muscled bodies
without guilt
Until the drugs began to show
The shootings, the after-game dementias
Yet I remained steadfast in my fascination
with the rhythms and twists
of fighting for a ball
as if life depended on carrying it
across chalk lines – the pointless enterprise
welcome distraction from bills and divorces and sick children,
unemployment, crime, and bad-ass motel chains
Until the game itself became a string of injuries
with gurneys and breathing tubes and useless muscles
And still I watched bending conscience only slightly
to accommodate violence replacing chesslike beauty
Until
I finally said I cannot watch this blood sport anymore
said it with regret until today I watched a tough guy cry
over too many hits, and surgeries and complications
An old man at 35
Juncos don't offer bounties for injuring
the neighborhood's Cooper's Hawk
or Great-Horned Owl
nor play clarinets in the rain
They sing their own songs
play their own games
Me, too
Martha Deed lives in North Tonawanda, NY. Her most recent book is The Last Collaboration (Furtherfield, 2012), a mixed-genre story of her daughter, Millie Niss's encounters with health care in the final year of her life, presented as Millie would have wanted it to be done. Companion piece to City Bird: Selected Poems (1991-2009) (BlazeVox, 2010) by Millie Niss, edited by Martha Deed. Martha Deed has previously published at The New Verse News.
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