He was our leader long ago, our captain —which is to say, something like a father to us, a gang of boys with a dream— even standing still he had swagger, carried himself like a king and so we made him ours. Once when half the team was late he told us to line up and sprint, and we did, back and forth across the field for an eternity —though probably ten minutes—until the rest arrived with sheepish looks on their faces, hastily lacing up their cleats. We were in for it—we knew they needed to run too, and so we all ran together, all of us suffering, half from the burn in our lungs and legs, the other half from shame, all of us hating the pain we were feeling. Looking down from high above, I imagined how beautiful we must have been, each of us shuttling from line to line like particles in a wave, rising and falling over and over, moving together, which, after all was the whole point, and which, in the end, we loved, and we felt it, that love, and after that day no one was ever late again.
Thank you, Michael for this poem. My gaze has been drawn over the last several days to groups of adolescent males--in real life, in a movie highlighting the loyalty that exists among adolescent male sperm whales, in my dreams, and in this poem. In a world filled with so much toxic masculinity, I am so thankful of your highlighting of this beautiful quality of the maturing masculine. I will keep this poem and return to it often. It makes me hopeful.