Male Bonding

Another synchronicity, this morning, I picked up a book from a pile on the floor, looking for a poem to post, cracked it and it opened to this one. Odd, since watching the Friday Night Fights was about the only thing I ever really did with my father in the 1950s. I suspect I'm not the only one.

luv, yardhog


Every Friday night we watched the fights

Me, ten years old and stretched out on the couch;

my father, in his wheelchair, looking on

as Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson

fought and won the battles we could not.

Him, twenty-nine, and beat up with disease;

me, counting God among my enemies

for what he'd done to us. We never touched.


But in between the rounds we'd sing, how we'd

Look sharp! Feel sharp! & Be sharp! with Gillette

and Howard Cosell, the Bela Lugosi of boxing.

Out in the Kitchen, my mother never understood

our need for blood, how this was as close as we'd get

to love-bobbing and weaving, feinting and sparing.

Ronald Wallace