Eberhart on ESPN
"Enigma rules, and the heart has no certainty."Richard Eberhart, "Flux"
Searching the crowd for my father,his red Eddie Bauer hat,hoping for a close-upof his never grim visage taking in anotherDartmouth-Princeton pigskin encounteron the Hanover plain
I would be with him for the home openerbut have moved to downcast Maine,tend two children, and so must relyon the sports channel, straining my eyesthrough the ranks of cheering alumnifor a glimpse of his patched jacketand that Monsieur Hulot hat,worn rain or shine
A dozen or so autumn afternoons come back to me,sitting with Dad and his class of 40 mates,who never seemed to bring their children along,leaving me stranded, obligedto recount for the umpteenth timemy shaky job history, my needfor yet another degree,poetry contests almost won
Then the ESPN camera singles outa puffy, whiskered face above a bodybundled against the September bleacher seats:my god, it's Richard Eberhart.poet emeritus of the Big Green!
Wearing a lips-closed, enigmatic smile,does Eberhart realise the cameraman aims at him?That he beams on a national screen?I can't help think of his famous poem"The Fury of Aerial Bombardment"when the Tigers' quarterback
completes a long bomb,which devastates the home crowd such a wondrous face, with eyesthat must be as sensitive as a cat's,so unlike those of the suddenly glummen and women who surround him...
Bright-eyed and bushy-chinnedEberhart stands infor the father I never findin the throng, whose red hatI half-mock, half-admireand now miss more than a grown manor son should dare confess.
