Not one of them still walks among us,
who can stand and talk and bicker
and make love; they’ve lost their footing
in the world, gone under
pitch and pool, run off the tracks
where they once circled, golden-thighed
and sprightlier than crowds of lookers-on.
They’re gone, the golfers in their wool plus-fours,
the divers in the suits with shoulder straps,
the quarterbacks in close-fit, leather helmets.
Looking in their eyes, behind the glass,
the glaze of decades, I can only wonder
what they make of me, this hovering
compassionate blank gaze from time beyond.
They would have to know
that I was coming, and that I would love them,
as I really do, for their blear innocence
and their fool faith in games to come.