Sports Poems
Slam, Dunk, & Hook
by Yusef Komunyakaa
Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury's
Insignia on our sneakers,
We outmaneuvered to footwork
Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings like silk
Ten feet out. In the roundhouse
Labyrinth our bodies
Created, we could almost
Last forever, poised in midair
Like storybook sea monsters.
......
The Racer's Widow
by Louise Gluck
The elements have merged into solicitude,
Spasms of violets rise above the mud
And weed, and soon the birds and ancients
Will be starting to arrive, bereaving points
South. But never mind. It is not painful to discuss
His death. I have been primed for this -
For separation - for so long. But still his face assaults
Me; I can hear that car careen again, the crowd coagulate on
asphalt
In my sleep. And watching him, I feel my legs like snow
......
All Ireland Final
by Theo Dorgan
We stand for the anthem, buoyant and tribal, heart beating with heart,
our colours brave, our faces turned towards the uncertain sun.
The man beside me takes my hand: good luck to yours, he says;
I squeeze his calloused palm and then - he's gone.
A shadow socket where he was, the one beside him vanishes
and another before me; all around Croke Park
one by one we wink out of existence: tens, hundreds, then
thousands, the great arena emptying out, the wind curling in
from the open world to gather us all away. Each single one of us.
I could feel myself fail at the end, but then maybe everyone thought that,
......
The Shirt
by Carol Ann Duffy
Afterwards, I found him alone at the bar
and asked him what went wrong. It's the shirt,
he said. When I pull it on it hangs on my back
like a shroud, or a poisoned jerkin from Grimm
seeping its curse onto my skin, the worst tattoo.
I shower and shave before I shrug on the shirt,
......
Sporty People
by Wendy Cope
I took her for my kind of person
And it was something of a shock
When my new friend revealed
That, once upon a time,
She was a Junior County Tennis Champion.
How could that happen?
How could I accidentally
Make friends with a tennis champion?
How could a tennis champion
......
AssLetes
by Jeffrey Pipes Guice
We used to praise you as our heroes
On the fields and on the courts...
We cheered you on so feverishly
In the world of professional sports...
We were proud to wear your jerseys
And memorized all your stats...
We were fiercely proud of you
We even called ourselves the Who Dats...
......
Wimbeldon
by Prabhakar Belavadi
june 20th arriving
players warm up in full swing
glittering trophies
What are Golfers not telling us?
by Dr. Robert Ippaso
There’s a part of me that say’s I’m jealous
Another thinks my golfing friends just zealous,
Whilst I crave fresh air and healthy motion
They’re busy slathering on the lotion
Before they mount some little cart
That with intent they simply point to dart
At breakneck speed from hole to hole
The putting of that little ball the goal.
Then there’s the clubs, that myriad bunch
......
The Roller in the Woods
by Kit Wright
Who would imagine a cricket ground
Had ever existed here,
Folded into a farm on the downland pasture,
Lapping the edge of the oakwood
And the buttercup-quilted rides?
For the Toll is returned to plough
After a century of combat,
Sown to a sea of blue-green waves
Beneath which it lies drowned.
And now,
......
The Pike
by Theodore Roethke
The river turns,
Leaving a place for the eye to rest,
A furred, a rocky pool,
A bottom of water.
The crabs tilt and eat, leisurely,
And the small fish lie, without shadow, motionless,
Or drift lazily in and out of the weeds.
The bottom-stones shimmer back their irregular striations,
And the half-sunken branch bends away from the gazer's eye.
......
