The Fool's World

Coaching Soccer

 Poem by Matthew J. Andrews   

 From the Archive of Saint Augustine's Magazine
Volume 2, No. 1 (2023).

The pitch is a glorious green, a thousand
blades of grass appearing as one.

Half these kids are focused, determined;
the others are untamed gusts of wind.

The drills are simple: Pass. Move.
Receive. But what are we learning?

To imagine a future from the scraps
made of our lives, to look at stars

and shape them into legends. Pass.
Move. Receive. To develop an ear

for the heartbeat of your neighbor,
to feel his song on the side of your foot.

They clump like stale sugar. They stumble,
they flail, they turn their heads inside out.

This is hard work, this battle of the soul.
We break to drink, to slow the breath,

then we’re at it again: Pass. Move. Receive.
Lift up your gaze. Open your eyes. See.