You can explain all the rules –
the endless drills, the skates’ white-cut perfect
curves, the blind passes, the adrenaline shadow
following you ten feet back – but why would you?

Puck in net.  Simple as a shoulder check.
In a dark bar north of Saskatoon I met
a former N.H.L. goon who tore his calves,
lost his way, limped back home to factory work,
poker, narcotics, and finally, poetry.

Silence between us. Poetry? On the screen two-inch men
passed back and forth like overdressed birds
in a brilliant white cage.
No other game with that finesse, he said, that rage.