High School Practice Poem by Donal Mahoney

Autumn arrives
and the local high school
has a good football team.
They take the field every afternoon
and practice to a chorus of grunts.
The team has always won championships.
The track team can’t use the field
so they run laps silently in single file
around the neighborhood and dash
past the old man in the wheelchair.
Sixty years ago he set a state record
running the mile for the same school.
The runners have no idea who he is.
They don’t look at him now when
he salutes like a champion.