Our Fathers, They’re
Watching
John C. Mannone
With the clock
running out, down by five,
the losing team
doesn’t have much hope beyond
rosaries and holy
water in their back pockets.
The Center snaps
the football into the hands
of the
quarterback, who drops back behind
the line of
scrimmage, fakes left, cuts right
for what looks
like an end run, but hands off
the ball to the
halfback running in reverse—
a kind of chaos
that only desperation brings.
On the fly, the
running back madly searches
for any eligible
receiver way downfield.
For a moment, he
sees angels in the end zone,
blinks his eyes,
focuses on the split end
near the fringes
of the touchdown marker
and cross-fires
the football, while still
on the run, way
deep. A Hail Mary pass.
The coach on the
sidelines, praying, as leather
spirals through
thin air, arcing high into sun.
Goalposts glint
like a pot of gold at the end
of a rainbow. The
receiver’s arms stretch
out in front of
his stride as the ball drops
through all that
sky, as if from heaven,
threading through
waving arms of pass
defenders into a
cradle of fingers, the unerring
target. In split
seconds, he works the ball
to palm of his
hand, pulls it in close
to his heart and
falls to his knees
for the winning score.
Poet’s Notes: I was interested in the early use of
the term “Hail Mary Pass” in football. Knute Rockne used the term “Hail Mary
play” when his team, Notre Dame, beat Georgia Tech (October 28, 1922).
Some years later
when Notre Dame faced an undefeated Ohio State team (November 2, 1935) and
trailed 13–12 with less than a minute to play, William Shakespeare, Notre Dame’s
replacement quarterback (Pilney was injured), threw a “Hail Mary Pass” to Wayne
Millner, who caught the ball on his knees to win the game. The radio announcer
said, “I always said Shakespeare had a pair of rosary beads and a bottle of
holy water in his back pocket.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hail_Mary_passes_in_American_football
“Our Fathers, They’re
Watching,” is a variation of that account, and the title plays on those typical
Catholic prayers as well as the 1951 movie Angels
in the Outfield (at least tangentially).
The structure
could be taken as that of a football field (approx. 120 x 53 yd), which is
about 2:1 length to width. But I must confess, that I did not make that
calculation before I wrote the poem--it organically evolved that way.
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