Backfield Football (A Poem)

Their bodies under
the summer sun, glistening
and strong, are eager

for contact. Unrelenting,
their charges crash,
rarely breaking; and when

they fall, they lift
each other from the dirt
as brothers. They laugh

when they bleed, scarred
with the day, their limbs
aching and awoken.

--Matthew Stalbaum, 7/18/11

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I wrote this poem after playing my first ever game of tackle football this summer. I exaggerated the beginning a little bit I admit with the description of the bodies and everything, and writing about the experience like this does feel a bit strange, like I'm betraying it somehow or giving it more importance than it really has. Still, I wrote the poem, and I think it gets at that spirit of football played, not for professional reasons like the NFL or schools or anything, but just for fun. I want to touch up on some of the words in the near future, but I'm so satisfied with that last stanza that I don't mind much.