Section 17 Row H seats 11 and 12
Almost every home game does he see
A grey haired man with a clip board sits
Two seats over and one down from me
He's a scout for the bigs, Comes most games to watch
Can't watch as a fan anymore
They know he made it, was up with the Bruins
Played defence with Old Number Four
He watches intently for five minutes or so
Just enough to watch each kid skate twice
Then he drinks down his coffee all in one gulp
and then he returns his eyes to the ice
The Scout, we will call him, for lack of a name
Has seen kids who've got game disappear
They find out he's watching, they get all uptight
And they can't play 'cause they're all tense with fear

I watched for four games, got his routine down pat
Watched him arrive and watch the kids skate
He'd go down in the corner and stand by the glass
Watching close through the plexiglass plate
He stayed away from the coaches, the players as well
And the parents, he'd avoid like the plague
If one ever stopped him, and asked "How's my boy"
He'd smile, and give an answer so vague
His career ended early with a stick to the head
Almost killed him, but, he was too mean
His left the game early, with Wayne Maki to blame
The Scout, is Edward "Ted" Green


Each season he'd sit, watching game after game
In arenas all over the land
Some kids he'd notice, he did not come to watch
They were just something that wasn't planned
He'd come into town to watch a kid who could score
And go home with two names on his list
One a defence man, and the goalie as well
But, the scorer, couldn't skate and got missed
Ted, would watch and make his reports on kids
Some were right, and the kid would go pro
He may be a star in the minors right now
But, the bigs...well, fate only knows

He'd listen to parents and coaches talk of the boys
Saying "My son's the next Bobby Orr"
Ted would chuckle a little and not say a word
He knew the kid would be heard from no more
Putting pressure like that on a young players back
Is like saying, "My boy will be God"
From then on it's never, the talented kid
I'ts the boy cursed with Orr's lightning rod
Many young players get compared to the best
But to say it out loud is a curse
You put a red dot on the young players back
He may as well leave in a hearse

Ted's seen them all, coaches, players and bums
Played when the game was real tough
They  had lighter equipment, not kevlar like now
and Ted, as we know liked it rough
His scratches and scribbles on the page tell a lot
But to the untrained they look like a mess
A pharmacy student couldn't read what he wrote
Nor a court stenographer I guess
He's a spotter of talent with stories to tell
More of them about kids who fell short
Most of them cursed with the "My kids the next..."
and the name of the best in the sport

Two Hundred and Ten games he watches each year
Most times he's gone early on
He's sees what he needs and then he packs up his stuff
And by the end of the first, Ted is gone
He's off on the road to another ice rink
To sit and watch on the hard seats, so cold
To listen as parents and coaches again
Talk of greatness, it's all gotten old
Terrible Ted has a warriors soul
And his grey hair is thinner but, curly
He has ice in his veins and a stick through his heart
Too bad his playing time ended too early.

Jack and Jill
Went up the hill
With Bill And Ted
To buy two bottles
Of mineral water.


Jack and Jill
Came tumbling down
Fatally cracking their heads open
And the local council was done
For corporate manslaughter.


But Bill and Ted
Came down on their mountain bikes
With the mineral water
towed on a skateboard.


And having buried Jack and Jill
At an environmentally friendly funeral
They headed for the Amazon
On solar powered surfboards.


Thus they concurred
This was yet again
As vinegar
Bed and
Brown paper-free
As there ever could be
Excellent Adventure.

Aging arms splotched with purple and red
signs of tangling with jagged dead branches
among white pines along the back of the yard
reach for a copy of Ted Kooser's Flying at Night.
Pages flip for a stop here and there
to read Sunset, Carp and Spring Plowing
Envy swells inside him with the realization
that he will never write such fine poems
which prompt memories of childhood adventures
living rural among tiger lilies blooming in meadows,
newborn calves teetering toward first steps,
and freshly spread manure capturing the scent of fall air.
His fingers still grimy from early morning planting
place Kooser's volume carefully beside his empty coffee cup
content that he is blessed to have discovered it
that day hiding next to classic tomes by Shakespeare and Whitman.
He rises to tackle digging potholes for double begonias
to decorate his yard and and to dream of pages unread.

He sat there behind the table,
with his glasses sitting on his nose,
and his skin sitting on his bones - both loosely,
the way you’d expect someone to sit
after 75 years of good, but hard, living.

“The trick is-” he said
deliberately pausing to shift the weight of the sentence
toward the upcoming words
“you have to wipe away all the things you don't want to see."
He said this as he scribbled his name
inside my new copy of his old book
smiling in that gentle old man way.

I scampered away like a schoolboy
feeling like an idiot
having rambled at him
in my best impression of a scholar
- like a kid wearing his dad’s oversized suit.

I talked at him about
how well he captures a moment in poetry
like this former US Poet Laureate
wasn’t aware of his talent
and I was somehow the first
delivering the good news.

As I wander the campus,
having escaped my embarrassment
I think back to a poem he read tonight
about watching an old couple sharing a sandwich.
It was an ode to love,
an image you can see in any sit down restaurant,
literally anywhere in America.
He focused in on this couple,
in this diner
at this moment
apart from time, like a moving still life
forever framed by his words.

He wiped away the screaming kid
and its overwhelmed mother in the booth to the left,
the table of teenagers playing hooky to their right,
and the underpaid twnetysomething waitress
who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway.

He wiped away all of that distraction
and unearthed this beautiful moment
this pure example of true love-
A sandwich cut from corner to corner
by the shaking hands of a man
whose glasses sit upon his face
and skin upon his bones
all the way you expect a man to
with woman he’s loved for forty years
with whom he shares everything.

I think about the moments I have missed
the poems never writ
because I was staring at the waitress,
who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway.

In the aftermath
Of a very hot bath
Sylvia Plath
Used to re-read
Katherine Mansfield stories
Until she felt
A little bit snory.

Whilst Ted Hughes -
After he'd imbued
The cool waters of
A shower for an hour -
Would watch Jackanory
Till he felt Hunky Dory
Then listen to Aladdin Sane
To bring him back to
The real world again.

Watch That Man!