Football season has just begun, and some members of my family are already enthusiastically watching the games and hoping their favorite team will make it to the Super Bowl again this year.
I’ve written lots of sports poems over the years, including a couple about football. But those poems could just as easily have been about soccer as American football. This is the first poem I’ve written that is unmistakably about American football, complete with a quarterback throwing the ball and sending it spiraling through the air.
When I started thinking about what kind of football poem I wanted to write, I thought it might be fun to tell the story from the football’s point of view. After all, what would it feel like to actually *be* a football? You’d get to soar through the air while thousands of people cheered. Players would leap to catch you, cradle you in their arms, protect you from the other team, and carry you down the field. That sounds like a pretty exciting life.
Of course, being a football might have its downsides too. But I’ll let the football tell you about those itself.
Here’s my newest poem…
It’s Fun to Be a Football
It’s fun to be a football.
It’s phenomenal to fly.
The feeling is fantastic as
I spiral through the sky.
The quarterback releases me.
I rocket through the air
and soar above the roaring cheers
of everybody there.
The players leap to catch me.
Then they form a human shield
to keep me from the other team
and run me down the field.
They hold me close and rock me
like a baby as they run.
I’m glad that I’m a football.
As a football, life is fun.
It’s honestly incredible
except in one regard…
I really wish the players wouldn’t
kick me quite so hard.
— Kenn Nesbitt
