POETRY FRIDAY

We are about a month from the end of the boys' high school football season. And I have decided that being the mother of a football player causes every weird and dormant alter ego that I might have ever had (and would have vehemently denied was a part of me) to come to the surface. That person that wants to stand up and punch the person who is criticizing the fourteen-year-old freshman quarterbacking the varsity team, who happens to be my son. And that selfish one who prays, when somebody's baby is down on the field a little too long, "Oh, please, don't let it be my child…" And that one who does not quite know how to support her child and balance his dreams, with the cruel realities of life…

THE WOMAN FIVE DOORS DOWN- Francis Duggan
The woman five doors down tells me her son Ted is the best player in the school football team
And that one day he will play in an A.F.L. Grand Final and that more than once of late she's had this dream
Of watching him receive the Coleman medal for best on ground on football's biggest day
Watched by well over ninety thousand people who cheer him on with a loud hip hooray.

Read the rest of the poem here.

POETRY FRIDAY is at PICTURE BOOK OF THE DAY.