Sample Poems by Philip Raisor

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The Illiad Games

Championship banners hung from rafters
in our school Field House-for basketball.
Only two thin ribbons for football and track.
Charlie Byrd Thomas was our great pitcher
and he made it to a tryout for a farm team,
but he was African- American, colored then,
and disappeared into the Negro League.
I don't recall, growing up, seeing a trophy
for wrestling. Yet, each Fall, for three years,
six of us gathered on mats in a back room
and mastered the moves of the Olympians.

We drew names from Homer (comic books
first, then prose translations): Athens
and Troy, Hector and Achilles, and after
the death of Patroclus, the funeral games.
We honored the dead-from fat George's
squirrely dog to Quackenbush's run-down
shell of an out-house. We studied rarely
in school, but clamored to rise like Ajax
and put on the silvery shorts of Odysseus.
With thousands surrounding us in this
empty hall, we called on the gods to watch.

What they saw was the slip and slide
of sweaty bodies lifting and tugging, trying
to lean like stiff beams against canvas.
Chili dove for ankles, Willard recited lines
from Pindar and attacked a shoulder.
Cleverly we plucked leg hairs, panted like
Rooster's hot sister, ate garlic. In the end,
the text prevailed: "You have both won;
take your well-earned prizes and withdraw."
Laughter, heroes, honor in the old sense
lasted until Chili was blown up near Saigon.

He wore no ribbons. We held no games.

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Coaching

A dozen times I heard my coach say:
damn it, son, don't plant your feet,
stay off balance, go high.
You've learned the rear-turn
and the back-door move on your guard;
you've learned the head-fake and the back-pass,
the fast-break and the pump-in-reverse lay-up.
Now learn fire.

Here he came with his fire and brimstone
with his stories about the fall of man
blowing at me like a referee's whistle.

When I was young, he said, moccasins clustered
like wild onions, Wapahani chanted our names.
We dug for natural gas, and nights my father
sweated out back in a hardwood skewer shop,
his dark face fired by a kiln. My mother
chopped potatoes thin and prayed hard
for the earth to break open. It did. One night
under father's feet the sod collapsed
like a hollowed-out log. I saw flames leap
and inhale him in a glow. He cursed this earth
and blessed the holy fire-I'm telling you, son-
the fire that will come like a thief to end this misery,
when a hand will quake, doves will spoil
their feathers, and men will rise to win their glory.

A slam-dunk is a religious act, I suppose,
but I'm five-nine and want the game slowed down,
bounce passes, no one keeping score.

My brother and I hunted one Sunday,
reluctant heirs of a family habit. We chopped
snakes into pieces and set fire to weeds
until rabbits darted out of vines and briars.
We splattered their heads with twelve gauges.
Sickened, we inhaled the smoke and vowed
to tour the burned- out field and rake away
the stubble we had caused. In fresh earth
we scraped together brush piles and blowdowns
and promised not to scatter the loon's nest,
rattle the seasoned buck at rest. That winter,
we squatted at creek's edge with the seared skin
of spotted owls, learned to breathe like roots
burrowing through ashes.

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Rising Star

She stood in the alley and kicked the ball
against the garage door, again and again,
explosions even neighbors approved.
On game day carloads of fans watched
her lope across the field like a young dog
off its leash. They wished she was theirs.
Her header at goal launched her body
into a maze of defenders, arms raised,
who dove to block her, but she was gone,
leaping and wagging in celebration.

The echoes in the alley were muted,
but not her father's voice in the kitchen.
It rose like a fist blind-siding a wall
near her mother's face, cheap shot for one
who hunted deer with a sixteen gauge.
At the window her mother leaned into glass,
hovered like a small animal whose feint
and dodge in an open field is all the hope
it has. What could she do, this daughter
who learned rules, out-of-bound lines,

respect for outrageous calls by referees?
She had lost close games and sobbed
in teammates' arms. She had known
days of debris and counsel from friends:
the next time, we'll win the next time,
advice even she knew was useless now.
Let others decide if what she did was wise
or merely the gasp of a desperate child,
but she headed the ball, cupped her hands,

and shouted. "Momma, come to the game.
You can cheer. You can cheer, Momma."

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Whistle-Stop

We all stood, faced the flag, and sang
about early dawn and perilous fights,
our eyes locked on home plate
where a replica of The Babe, just dead,
leaned like a tourist attraction one had to see.

Honor was something about home runs,
playing hard, making records. I gripped
my cap and promised I would obey my parents,
praise baseball, and one day, nothing could stop me,
I would earn respect with my love of the game.

Then, we heard the whistle, and we knew.
"I don't believe it," my father shouted, leaping down
the ramp and racing toward the Magellan train
just braking near the Walnut Street depot.

"He's here! He's here!" I ran with hundreds
along the tracks, their placards pumping,
their voices drunk as joyous blackbirds.

Almost trampled, I stumbled, grabbed
a historical marker on the corner.
The plaque read circa 8,000 B.C.
our clan of hunters camped on this spot
of chirtz and fire-cracked rock,
butchered the mastodon, and settled
down to await the rise of the
green and quiet earth.

"Come on, hurry!" my uncle urged,
waving his Purple Heart in the air,
his crutch a dangling membrane.
He was not remembering a minefield
near Reims, nor could he see ahead,
three years, the flag- draped casket of his son.
Now, marching down those tracks,
my father led us toward what we came to hear:
Ladies and Gentlemen, the next President
of the United States. "Give 'em hell, Harry!"
my uncle shouted. "Give 'em hell,"
his face a wrinkled and luminous anthem.