I love the feel of pigskin,
like my ancestors loved the swell
of bladder—bloated with breath,
pressed between thumb and palm,
tight as lungs ready to explode
with battle cries and broken teeth.
We learned passion from the bladder.
Skin against skin. What's not to love?
Why use a pig's bladder –
Cradled like a sweet, loveable baby?
Love would fly through the air -
Filled with passion —
Caught - a pig’s bladder
covered with pieces of leather,
possibly from a sweet, loveable deer.
It was round enough and dear enough
to cradle the world,
to be kicked through enemy gates,
to be chased by village wolves
teeth bared, faces smeared with dirt
and blood of the holy mob.
Kicked, crushed, rolled,
tossed like dreams up into the air
toward an altar no one believed in –
but they believed in the bladder.
Breath inside death,
life inflated, a perfect violent metaphor
for anything worth wanting. . .
For anything worth loving.
I know that sound—the thud,
that thick and ancient thud. . .
thud…thud…thud
of foot against bladder, leather against sinew.
The spin of the ball as it arcs across history,
through castles, over trenches,
landing in the hands of someone like me,
hungry to hold history again.
Football, you call it.
But it’s a love letter to every pig
that ever sacrificed its insides
so we could run like maniacs
and crush each other beneath the weight
of some ridiculous, beautiful game
we don’t fully understand.
Because it started with a bladder.
