Well that sucked, but it was exciting
Eddie George inches from the ultimate goal
From the Big Show that never opened
Remember him suspended, stretched, reaching
Into nothing, into Almost Something
Remember how time and motion stopped, swelled
Pushing out against your hope wrapped around it
Until the burst became inevitable; remember
How that moment was silent, cruel, teasing; remember
How you couldn’t have known that in your future memory
It would seem like there was in some impossible background
The panicked and pulsing protest of crows or gulls or some
Other kind of mourning bird scavenging the terrain for a carcass
To pick clean: It wailed ah-AH ah-AH ah-AH ah-AH all through a moment
That would never reappear: Eddie was traded; McNair is dead
Only a game like your life, only a player like you, except
The stakes are higher because there’s kids involved
And pride to stroke; you can’t sprint uphill with a thousand tires strapped
To your shoulders the way Eddie could; you can’t juke and toss like McNair
Chasing wings with foam and sharing a moment of unity with the world
With ballers and brewers and brawlers and bawlers—a lighter world
On your shoulders you thought really really mattered if dropped
Did anyone in that joint or on that field really anticipate how that world and that moment would swell
Into a Now that presses down so hard all a man can do is push against a defensive line so immovable
That Time cracks into a million pieces, that an inch stretches into miles, into light years, that the only
New sound in your head these days (moments?) is the conflagration of entropy picking you clean:
You, in silence, wail: ah-AH ah-AH ah-AH ah-AH all through every tongue-tipped moment
Remember that; remember it so your swelling hope-world stretches out only into inches that are manageable.
