The Eagle’s Mile

The Olympian

The Olympian Los Angeles back-yarding in its blue-eyed waters Of empty swim, by my tract-house of packaged hard-candy I lay in wait with the sun And celebrity beer for the Olympian, Now my oldest boy's junior High school algebra teacher, who had brought back the black-magic gold Of the East, down the fast lane, Freewaying, superhuman with rubberized home-stretch, The four hundred meters from Tokyo To Balboa Boulevard, leaving in his wake All over the earth, the Others, the nation-motley doom-striped ones, Those heart-eating sprinters, those Losers. With Olympia Beer I was warming Warming up with the best chill waters Of the West Coast, cascading never-ending Down out of Washington State. Now is your moment of truth With me at last, O Champion! for I had laid a course as strange To him as to me. Steeplechase! I had always leapt into water Feet first, and could get out Faster than in. I was ready for the Big One: For the Water Jump in the corner Of the lax, purfled pool, under the cemented palm Where at night the shrewd rat climbed And rustled and ruled the brown fronds over the underlit Blue oval, surveyingSepulveda, And in its color and kind, suffered World recognition. With a slide-rule in his shirt-pocket, His bullet-proof glasses drawing Into points—competitive points— and fish-eye-lensing, Crossflashing on my hogged, haggard grassplot Of slapped-down, laid-back Sepulveda, just after he'd Won It All, He came lankily, finely drawn Onto my turf, where all the time I had been laying For him, building my energy-starches, 3° My hilarious, pizza-fed fury. My career of fat Lay in the speed-trap, in the buckets and tools of the game-plan, The snarls of purified rope. Then dawned the strict gods of Sparta, The free gods of Athens! O lungs of Pheidippides collapsing in a square Of the delivered city! O hot, just-hurdlable gates Of deck-chairs! Lounges! A measured universe Of exhilarating laws! Here I had come there I'd gone Laying it down confusing, staggering The fast lane and the slow, on and over And over recliners, sun-cots, cleaning-poles and beach-balls, Foiled cans of rusty rat-poison bowing, split casks Of diatomaceous earth corks spaced-out like California On blue-and-white dacron cords lost-and-found swim-fins Unmatched and pigeon-toed half-hearted air In blazing rings doughnuts and play rafts dragons and elephants Blown-up by mouth, now sighing most of life Away the lawful No-Running signs Turned to the wall. And all the time, all the time, Under the brown-browed, rose-ash glower Of the smog-bank, the crows, long gone Gray with the risen freeways, were thronging and hawing To be Doves of Peace to be turned Loose, displaying and escaping, over the jolted crowds Of Unimart, the rammed Victory Stand, and in the rose-ash Of early dusk, we called our wives, gray as crows In their golf-hats, to the secret Olympics, laid down in my laws Within laws, where world champions, now mad with the moon Of moonlighting, sold running shoes. This so, we insisted On commercials, those all-comers' Career-dreams of athletes: "We are brought to you by the Bringers of the Flame, The double-dry double martini," those women said. "Get set! Get set! You're being born Again, in spite of everything!" James Bond and my smallest boy Blazed with one cap-pistol together. We hove like whales from the line. 3i Twice around We were going for, cursing and cruising like ghosts, over dog-food bowls, Over sprinklers passed-out from their spin-off Of rainbows and I was losing But not badly, and even gained a little, coming out Of the water-jump and over the jump-rope, and out of him or maybe Me surely me burst a mindless deep Belching blindsiding laugh down the backstretch Of earth-kegs and dirty cleansing-tools that skinned the dust From the under-blue, and for one unsettling moment left it Blazing and mattering. I blazed I felt great I was a great Plaster stadium-god lagging lolloping hanging In there with the best: was running pale and heavy With cement-dust from two wives running Then coming around coming back Down the slow lane lurching lorry-swaying...