Meditations during Super Bowl Week

Glendale, Arizona

"If it's the ultimate game, how come they're playing it again next year?" - Duane Thomas

The pocket collapsed with the blind side blitz
As the dime back slipped the block of the slot receiver.
Grown men with antlers sticking from curly blue wigs gasped
As if they felt more pain than the players.
From power-I to single-wing to run’n’shoot shotgun they shifted
Ran an off-tackle screen diagnosed by the weak-side back
Who slid between the pulling guards to swat a knee.
The pain of bodies liquefied is less somehow than the pain of failure,
But any pain is more comfortable than life outside of the game.
Third and long, with life and death on the line,
A play-action sweep into a stunt package,
Foiled by trap blocks and crosses turned to picks
That exposed the free safety to man coverage
Of the flanker on a deep corner fade from a button-hook fake.
The defender gets his fingernail tip in front of the ball,
Enough to unwind the spiral from its path
And send the shudder of cataclysmic despair through the stands.

It’s just another three and out, a punt to be forgotten
Even by the guy in the throwback cap who dances at every snap.
And with each passing Fall there’s so much more to remember…
Those whose bones hold the winds of Kezar and the Stick
Can't forget the sacred names Cedrick Hardman, Woody Peoples,
Forrest Blue.
Those who’ve worn, at 16 below, the Honolulu blue and silver
Can trace the lineage from Yale Lary to Mel Farr to Bennie Blades.
Even when the team has been replaced, they still celebrate
Roger Werhli, Council Rudolph, MacArthur Lane,
Buzz Nutter, Big Daddy and Bubba, Ordelle Braase.
One team has an Assassin, Hitman, Hammer, Mad Stork (and two
Colgate fullbacks) in its books,
Another keeps alive the relics of a Rattler, Boobie, Boomer, Takeo,
Ickey Woods.
Of Natrone Means and Charles Way, Lawyers Tillman and Malloy,
Of Iron Head and Hacksaw, Diesel and the Fridge they sing
Of White Shoes and Night Train and Pork Chop and Juice,
From Bambi to Big Hands, Too Tall to Moose.
To Mile High, the Rockpile and the House of Pain they come
Bearing witness to their tribe: men with snouts and women’s clothes,
Men in dog masks chewing bones, Gerelas Gorillas in costume,
A sea of cheese in a deep December freeze.

The memories build like permanent wounds, the ecstasy grows
With the bloom of each red to brown season.
But fewer each year remember the warriors:
Roosevelts Brown, Grier, Sykes, Leaks and Colvin;
the way Leroy Kelly could run in the mud;
two punters with the names Sepulveda and Camarillo;
The moments: the longest field goal in NFL history
Kicked by a man with half a foot;
The seasons: the undefeated Dolphins in seventy-two
With the starting offensive line waived by other teams.

The "Made in US" label has always really meant these men
Who leap out bigger, faster, smarter every year
To electrify diagrams to freedom by sacrificing their bodies
In a game that brings violent giants to their knees
And lets the fortunate few, the misfit and the ruined,
Get carried on the shoulders of a captivated nation
That's suddenly forgotten blame and dissonance exist.