(i)
So how did you feel when you let that one in
at the end? What is it with you and bouncing shots?
My mask on the floor looks blankly up at me.
I see the pens cocked, the crowd around me like a choir.
Drag your ass into the showers, I tell myself, maybe you’ll drown.
“Boys. Who do you think you’re talking to here?
A poet? A fucking philosopher?”
So here I am again, it seems,
a third time in the city I call home. “Insurance,”
Gadsby told a doubting press, “those intangibles a veteran
like Terry can bring to a team.” Ten or twelve games at the most
is what he said to me. Surprisingly, the press has been kinder
to Crozier and me than they should, Calder Cup winners,
both of us, grinning in open relief when the other guy
or Edwards gets the call.
The crowds are snarly, though, recalling
what we used to be. And here’s the city itself in ruins,
brick buildings tumbled down. Vagrants lean against
what’s left of the walls. Grass and burdocks
grow up through the rubble.
Strangest of all, the gaping absence on Grande River
where once the Olympia opened its doors to the surging crowds
and horns and slamming cab doors. Someone let me go in
with a light one night before they tore it down.
The boards and glass and seats were gone.
I worked my way around to where the wives of the players
sat, trying to find their line of sight to the goals.
The building was eerily silent.
Shattered glass and plaster wherever I shone
my light, wires and cables dangling, twisting lazily.
Felt like I was walking under the sea.
I switched off the light and stood a long time listening.
Voices all around me in the dark.
Terry, how do you leave a game like that at the rink?
(ii)
I only come out of the showers after they’re gone.
Sons of bitch reporters. Won’t they ever leave me alone?
I take my time getting dressed and help an old attendant
gathering gear before the rats get after the salt.
Then grab a taxi to take me over to Windsor,
where Adams brought me once to look at the lights
of Detroit. You take the tunnel now, but you can see the last
of the train bridge on the Windsor side, weedy pilings pointing off
in all directions. The traffic inches toward the entrance,
sinking into a sea of blinking signal lights.
Not a happy sight for a tired goalie.
(iii)
Under the river, half the lights are out
and you think about where you are. So let the roof
come down, what do I care? Tell us what you thought when
Terry tell us what went through your…. Christ, boys.
Stop the bloody puck. What the hell else
would you want on your mind?
I settle back into the worn upholstery and think
about Pat turning up at the game tonight, a rare event,
Marcel and some of the guys went over to say how glad
they were to see her. Then I think about that soft one at the end,
the let-down crowd, their cat calls and laughter climbing the stairs.
She’d be staring down into her lap, I knew, like when we were
younger, not wanting to hear, clenching her nails
so hard her palms would bleed.
At night, her hands would brush my face,
the ridges of scars touching mine. Before all the other
began. All that other, I hardly know when.
The taxi reeks of its evening fares. Perfume
and cigarettes. Anxiety and defeat.
Under the flickering lights of the tunnel I close my eyes
and shift my tired legs. At some point, it’s just too late
to turn back. When I glanced up after the goal,
I couldn’t find her in the leaving crowd.
And where would you go to start again? All cities
are the same, all neighbourhoods and streets.
I sense the taxi slowing down, something snarling
traffic up ahead. This tunnel’s not a place you’d choose
to stop with water leaking everywhere.
Still, I’m strangely at ease with myself
tonight, knowing an old friend waits in an ancient
haunt, knowing, too, that near this river once I might have
been all I hoped to be, the guy you’d want behind you
when the game was on the line. The guy you’d leave
behind to guard the town. That cuts a bit,
but I’m safe enough down here with my thoughts.
Then I see the eyes in the mirror and a brow as dark
and scarred as my own. So, Mr Goalie, he murmurs
over his shoulder, the word’s out that you’re leaving town
again, what does it feel like being a three time loser?