Like a Man Gone Mad: Poems in a New Century

Off and Running

46 Off and Running It’s yours as long as you accept it as a gift. But stifle it with predetermined rhymes or cadences, and what you have is something less than poetry. There’s precedent enough to prove it. Dancers are never dancers while they toe their marks or count their steps. It’s not until the music and the dancers mate that dancing dances into dance. Lorca likewise coined a name for deepsong when the blood is so inflamed and frenzied that the singer sings possessed. And finally in football there’s a time when scrimmages release one runner with a chance for momentary fame. Dodging while he keeps his feet to stay in play, he sprints away from tackle after tackle and creates before our eyes the unexpected poem of the game. ...