Why I Might Go to the Next Football Game

sometimes you know things: once at a birthday party a little girl looked at her new party gloves and said she liked me, making suddenly the light much brighter so that the very small hairs shone above her lip. i felt stuffed, like a swimming pool, with words, like i knew something that was in a great tangled knot. and when we sat down i saw there were tiny glistenings on her legs, too. i knew something for sure then. but it was too big, or like the outside too everywhere, or maybe hiding inside, behind the bicycles where i later kissed her, not using my tongue. it was too giant and thin to squirm into, and be so well inside of, or too well hidden to punch, and feel. a few days later on the asphalt playground i tackled her. she skinned her elbow, and i even punched her and felt her, felt how soft the hairs were. i thought that i would make a fine football-playing poet, but now i know it is better to be an old, breathing man wrapped in a great coat in the stands, who remains standing after each play, who knows something, who rotates in his place rasping over and over the thing he knows: “whydidnhe pass? the other end was wide open! the end was wide open! the end was wide open . . .”