Hockey poem week - poem 4 Posted by João on 7:15 pm

Who among us growing up in Canada didn't grow up on road hockey? Who among us didn't pretend we were 'Rocket' Richard, Guy LaFleur, Wendel Clark or Wayne Gretzky? Every generation had its hockey idols and today's still do. No matter how cold outside, a round up of friends for a game of road hockey kept us warm.

Road Hockey – Bruce Meyer

The middle of my journey,
as the train shakes,
I wake from a dream
about my childhood
where I saw the boys
I played hockey with
on the frozen streets
beneath purple dusks.
Snow had settled
on the brown furrows
of the fall ploughings
the way a dusting of ice
clung to our corduroys
as we shouted and raved
in a dead-end street,
pushing and hacking
each other’s spindly legs
until the night descended
blackening the game
and calling us home
to those tiny rooms
taped with clippings
of Howe and Hull
and silver grails.
I wanted to go back there,
wanted to dream again
of what I would become
but only become
the things I am
regardless of the dreams.
And as I woke just now,
at some point in a journey
I realized we’d all
become grown men,
and the waking, not the growing
left me angry. Snow whirls
by the coach car window,
still clings to the furrows
of pantlegs and fields
as the journeymen continue on
their battles of earthly overtime
and the sudden darkness

after.