Football Weather

As a kid I tried to coax its coming By sleeping beneath light sheets Weeks before The funeral of the summer locusts in the yard; Then when Granny peeled down the crucifix of flypaper that dangled from the ceiling of the kitchen Magic wasn't needed any longer To fill the air with pigskins.   The air itself Acrid, lambent, bright As the robes of the Chinese gods inside their house of glass In the Field Museum by the lake. Even practice could be fun— The way, say, even sepia photographs of old-time All Americans could be pirates' gold Like my favorite Bill Corbus, Stanford's "Baby- Face Assassin" crouching at right guard, the last to play without a helmet on— And the fun of testing muscles out Like new shoes; the odor of the locker room pungent As the inside of a pumpkin; And the sting of that wet towel twirled against bare butt by a genial, roaring Ziggy, Mt. Carmel's All State tackle from Immaculate Conception Parish near the mills; And then the victory, especially the close shaves, could feel Like finally getting beneath a girl's brassiere She'll let you keep Unhooked for hours while you neck Until the windshield of your Granddad's Ford V-8 Becomes filled by a fog Not even Fu Manchu could penetrate.   Jack, Next football weather my son Luke will be in high school, Bigger than I was and well-coordinated—but Couldn't care a plenary indulgence If he ever lugs a pigskin down the turf Or hits a long shot on the court.   At times, I wish he would. So he might taste the happiness you knew Snagging Chris Zoukis' low pass to torpedo nine long yards to touchdown And sink archrival Lawrence High 45 years ago come this Thanksgiving Day.   Still, He has his own intensities As wild as sports and writing were for us: Luke's the seventh Rolling Stone, His electric guitar elegant and shiny black As a quiet street at night Glazed by rain and pumpkin frost.