Allegiance
The night green And gold lost To gold (the Packers To the 49ers) Lit up my allegiance. I cursed the souped- Up cars revving up And down 24th And the drunken Street-staggerers Screaming in victory As if in pain When it was I Who felt like crying, Prodded by the loss In a tender place, There since boyhood, When we rocked Starter jackets, flicked Bobbleheads who nodded At our question, “Will we win?” Threw passes To ourselves in the yard Sunday mornings, The pregame blaring From the speaker Of the screen porch, Pretending we were Sharpe and Brooks, Diving into leaves And always Coming up with it, Or acting out old games From the time when Face masks were A single bar And the goalposts stood At the goal line. Starr to McGee, Lombardi reluctantly proud. Fallible boys, infallible In our imaginations. That night in San Francisco, You valiantly tried To understand, but how Could I explain How something That doesn’t matter Matters so much?