A Memory in Sweat and Grace
In Nuremberg, summer pressed its full weight down -
thick as iron, bright as judgment -
onto a rugby pitch ringed by trees
too wise to move.
We ran anyway.
Ran until we weren’t sure
if the heat was in the air
or burning up from inside us.
We were the Ansbach Killer Karp -
forest green and black,
colors of deep things,
of roots and shadows.
They were the Black Knights of Nuremberg,
sharp in red and black -
banners from some old war
neither side remembered,
but both refused to lose.
It was not elegant.
Not pretty.
It was -
glorious.
Hard shoulders.
Bent backs.
Busted lips.
The kind of contact that asks
not if you can endure -
but if you’ll come back for more.
The scrum like a fist of earth,
grinding, gasping, alive.
My lungs were twin bellows
pumping fire.
The ball never kind, never still.
And the sun -
that cruel overseer -
seared our necks,
glared from chalk lines,
settled in the throat
until even swearing came out dry.
Then the whistle.
No cheers -
just breath,
hands on knees,
steam lifting from our skin.
And then -
an offering:
a battered blue cooler.
The lid opened like a hymnal.
Becks.
Not a beer I’d ever ask for -
too bitter, too thin -
but that day,
that bottle -
Lord.
Green glass sweating
like it had played the match with us.
The cold kissed my palm.
I cracked it open,
drank like I was trying
to sip back the part of myself
I’d burned away.
It tasted of grass and grit,
of brotherhood and dust,
of something we’d won
that no one would ever write down.
It hit a lost nerve
at the base of my skull,
lit me up with the small, holy flame
of relief.
We leaned on each other then,
warriors at ease,
our laughter rough
but whole.
No one said much.
No one needed to.
Strange -
that I remember it still,
nearly half a century on,
when even the bruises
are ghosts.
But I do.
And I bless that bottle -
the way Mary might bless
a wild goose,
or the silence between stanzas -
not because it was the best,
but because,
for one brief, blazing moment,
it was enough.
GBS
2019
0 Comments