Our bodies, we know, are finite. This is one condition of being human, and whether or not we accept it, we yield to it. Our bodies get sick. Our bodies get injured. Our bodies inevitably meet their biological end.

This is too cold a truth for these dark winter months maybe. But here’s where some light comes in: 

Sport. 

Playing it: Letting our bodies go to the outer edges of what we believe we can do, slipping the leash of our mortality for a few minutes, for a moment. 

Seeing Flat Top Mountain 

this morning, its cold peak 

a paint pot of orange and rose,

I’m reminded of reading 

Wordsworth as a sophomore 

in eastern Idaho, when every

For Coach Gregg Popovich, J.S., & R.S., M.E., & J.C.

because he now has the highest

winning percentage in season-openers, 

which feels ironic when I imagine

a young Pop in a military post somewhere

ending any bar fight—not starting them.

The boys love ball and hoop anytime, anywhere, stare at scores and have dunk contests with the little hoop on the door. The boys leap & loop and break themselves and bounce back. The door hoop has been Shaqqed to death four times, but they have to do an hour of chores to earn a new one after cracking a backboard. The boys love ball, more I think than they love me but not my wife, which is okay, I get it, ball is life and they love it and so do I. Life comes and goes in so many ways and 

a teardrop falls and celebrates.

When I was eight, I was a god.

We all were.

We didn't have rules then about inning limits 

or “the play's over once a fielder touches the ball.”

I hit 27 dingers with an aluminum bat Mom & Dad 

bought me at the hardware store.

It pinged and every old man grimaced, waiting for a crack 

like a knee, like a belt.

It helps to think of it as a city.  The beginning

Of a city, a little town blooming loud around you.

You’re in the middle of it, side-central flower.

There are creeks that run with the sound of

Crying babies.  This is perfectly normal.

This is how cities are made—first with eggs

On a fervent bed of moss.  Purple moss,

Violence is a marker
of the condition. 
A series of questions becomes diagnosis. The animal
backs into a corner. Car crash.

Randy “Macho Man” Savage: I am the cream, yeah, the cream of the crop. And there is no-one that does it better than the Macho Man Randy Savage! On balance, off balance, doesn't matter...I'm on my way, and nothing is gonna stop me. Nothing's gonna stop me.

limp head turned right to hide 

pain, ice pack just as penetrating 

as the firm heavyweight grip that helped pay to feed 

the muscles now torn, left to dangle

After Miguel Cabrera hits his 499th home run
I make you guess all the members of the 500 club
You take it so seriously
Give it more thought than the time

Something about the essay on Federer that no one sees, that maybe no one wants to see. But you see it. You do all the searches, and there are a few mentions, but no one else seems to see it, see the necessity of the sadness to the essay, to sports.

LOUIS ARMSTRONG STADIUM, US OPEN, QUEENS.

In tennis, love equals zero. 

A cut shot nullifies a heavy roller. 

To combat power, one strategy is taking pace off your opponent’s ball. This is harder than it sounds. 

There’s a strange dichotomy in sports. Winning=Elation=Relief. There’s also a form of emptiness in winning. And fear. You ask yourself—what next? How do I top that? 

You jump out of the car in the middle of the college town where you went to poetry readings with sushi and wine, where you served wings and got fired for your inability to smile, where you became a feminist and an atheist and made your mother and your boyfriend cry. Your family follows you down sunlit alleys and you feel the heat fight it out with the shadows at ten AM and you know it’s going to obliterate your makeup and your hairspray and your will to live by noon, so you steer everyone towards the bar with the tiger painted in a beer mug and order two ciders and a shot and then you are on a patio talking with your mother about your sex life, explaining how you think about it all the time but almost never with your husband even though he is great in bed like a

Formation: At three months old, I sit beside my dad, strapped into the carrier, and we watch a football game together. He starts and stops the video, rewinds, takes notes. The flicker of light, the splash of color captures my attention, but the impressions left against infant imagination become a habit. I am watching. I spend my life watching.

We all sat in a circle on the floor of the basketball court. It was the end of our first practice for the season, and our coach was wrapping up by giving us our Bible verses to read for next week. This was my last season in Elevate, a recreational Christian basketball league, as I was graduating high school in the Spring. Every girl looked towards the coach, but it felt like they were focused on me—on my legs.

For all intents and purposes, my football career ended on a cool October day in 1984 in New Rochelle, New York. I was 13 years old and playing linebacker for the Fairfield (Connecticut) Giants. We typically beat our local rivals but struggled when we’d cross state lines and play Westchester powerhouses. New Rochelle’s star player was a kid I knew from football camp named Curtis. He claimed to be related to a former Heisman Trophy winner but that assertion had as much veracity as my family ties to Bernie Parent, the Hall of Fame Philadelphia Flyers goalie.

There are only seconds left. I take a seat on the bench and wait for it to be over, squeezing in between two guys nicknamed Henny and Ferg. From far away, we all look the same. Our green and blue jerseys that have an angry-looking shark stitched on the front. Our identical helmets and pants and padded gloves. Then there are our skates, two carbon fibre boots with steel blades screwed into their bottoms, three-quarters of an inch thick, and sharp.

Coach sent the four slowest boys home and told the rest of us if we were late the next day we might as well not bother showing up. He was still making cuts.

The players huddled on the sideline, grass-stained and weary. 

You’re playing like owls, Coach said. Gimme hawks!

How’s that? asked Bobby. He was co-captain, an Aries.

You’re owls! Coach yelled. I want to see hawks! 

We got that, said Sally. She’d been warming the benches. Just—what’s the key difference? Tell us again.

Jeff Bordick rose from his seat and pedaled hard. Everyone said the baseball card crackling between his spokes sounded like a motorcycle, but he didn’t think they were really listening. Sounded more like a bird, like one of those plump and shiny robin redbreasts that hop around the yard until someone bursts outside and spooks them. The card flapped like robins fleeing to safety, their little wings beating, only their sweet chirp missing.

Look at him. Already out there in the middle of the ring, pacing around. Where’d he come from? He got no introduction, no walk-in music, no pyrotechnics, no fancy costume, no cool nickname. He appeared and no one noticed. Did you catch his real name, even? Paul or Dean or Richard, who knows? He looks like a Ron. So now it’s Ron…

“Marching steps!” the skating coach calls, and I watch my little Kara trip over her tiny boots, blades catching on the ice. My heart skips a beat when she falls. She looks so small on the wide expanse of white ahead of her, so clumsy as the coach comes to an unnaturally graceful stop by her side.

In the top of the fourth, Randy Papke, the beer guy for sections 121 and 122, sits down. After a two-hour rain delay, there are plenty of empty seats. He finds a nearly abandoned row behind the Giants’ dugout, avoiding the spot where old Louise had been sitting, further down. He slides the insulated crate into the walk-space and follows it. He’s on the verge of being canned but sits down anyway. Well, the boss practically ordered him to. He can still sell Bud Light but the fans will have to come to him. They’ll have to pour their own.