|

Releasing the Doves

Christopher T. George

Saturday, February 26th, 2005

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 I see you at your Vatican window as you deliver
your appeal for world peace and you release
two white doves with the boy who reminds you
of your Polish childhood kicking a balled cloth
that substituted for a leather sphere. They refuse

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 to fly over the crowd in the plaza but flutter
into the room. You bat them with a hand palsied
from Parkinson’s disease, your voice a hoarse
whisper, dogged by the respiratory infection
that will send you to the Gemelli Hospital.

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 You grin at your incapacity to catch the doves
as once you’d have chased them around the room;
but now you’re a shell of the athlete and skier,
the young hassocked seminarian playing soccer
with a brown leather ball, hoofing it toward goal

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Christopher T. George

© Christopher T. George 2005

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/releasing-the-doves/