Poems
The New Kid
by Mike Makley
A few of the kids and their parents say they don’t believe that the new
kid should play But she’s good as me, Dutch, PeeWee, or Earl, so we
don’t care that the new kid’s a girl.
by Richard Armour
Good sportsmanship we hail, we sing, It’s always pleasant when you spot
it.
There’s only one unhappy thing:
You have to lose to prove you’ve got it.
Good Sportsmanship
The shortest fight
I ever saw
Was a left to the body And a right to the jaw.
The Knockout
by Lillian Morrison
Associations
by Eve Merriam
Home to me is not a house Filled with family faces;
Home is where I slide in free By rounding all the bases.
A tie to me is not
Clothing like a hat;
It means the game is even up And I wish I were at bat.
The Base Stealer by Robert Francis
Poised between going on and back, pulled Both ways taut like a
tightrope-walker, Fingertips pointing the opposites, Now bouncing tiptoe
like a dropped ball Or a kid skipping rope, come on, come on, Running a
scattering of steps sidewise, How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,
Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird, He’s only flirting, crowd
him, crowd him, Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate—now!
The Sidewalk Racer OR On the Skateboard by Lillian Morrison
Skimming an asphalt sea I swerve, I curve, I sway; I speed to whirring
sound an inch above the ground; I’m the sailor and the sail, I’m the
driver and the wheel I’m the one and only single engine human auto
mobile.
This may not look like a poem, but it is. Read it aloud and you will
discover the rhymes.
Football
by Walt Mason
The Game was ended, and the noise at last had died away, and now they
gathered up the boys where they in pieces lay. And one was hammered in
the ground by many a jolt and jar; some fragments never have been found,
they flew away so far. They found a stack of tawny hair, some fourteen
cubits high; it was the half-back, lying there, where he had crawled to
die. They placed the pieces on a door, and from the crimson field, that
hero then they gently bore, like soldier on his shield. The surgeon
toiled the livelong night above the gory wreck; he got the ribs adjusted
right, the wishbone and the neck. He soldered on the ears and toes, and
got the spine in place, and fixed a gutta-percha nose upon the mangled
face. And then he washed his hands and said: “I’m glad that task is
done!” The half-back raised his fractured head, and cried: “I call this
fun!”
Foul Shot by Edwin A. Hoey
With two 60’s stuck on the scoreboard And two seconds hanging on the
clock, The solemn boy in the center of eyes, Squeezed by silence, Seeks
out the line with his feet, Soothes his hands along his uniform, Gently
drums the ball against the floor, Then measures the waiting net, Raises
the ball on his right hand, Balances it with his left, Calms it with
fingertips, Breathes, Crouches, Waits, And then through a stretching of
stillness, Nudges it upward.
The ball slides up and out.
Lands, Leans, Wobbles, Wavers, Hesitates, Exasperates, Plays it coy
Until every face begs with unsounding screams—
And then
And then,
And then,
Right before ROAR-UP, Dives down and through.
