For Ricky*
Ricky Williams, Miami Running Back (2002-2003, 2005)
When the news broke and the camera pointed at a torn tent
on the outskirts of Miami where you sat knees-up-to-chest
professing enlightenment, the football world sacked itself
wondering how good your pot really was. Must have been
growing straight from Buddha’s back yard because to give
up 16 million like that, to go from bachelor pad demigod
to hippy hero of the pimply pot smokers, requires some
kind of unfathomable spirituality. I wonder if the Sadhu
could even find a desk big enough for your frame. All 230 pounds
lurching forward with brittle bones towards some kind
of endzone sanctity not represented by a smiling porpoise
but a transcendent 1st and ten where maybe you’d be happy.
After your final game I imagined you’d do what so many
washed up athletes do: find meaning in the parking lot
of a used car palace or open up a Dairy Queen, maybe
join your kids PTA and tell fourth graders stories that
you now half-believe. I didn’t think it be like this: you smoking
reefer under a mauled tarpaulin, brushing fly’s away from
dingy dredlocks, running forward, exasperatedly free,
while a nation wonders why you’ve failed us.