Away Game

The moments pass away
impossibly slow
We sit cross-legged, chained to the ground, picking grass
and trying not to look
at the paramedics working jerkily
or at Dylan, who lay the hit
that snapped the back
of the boy laying broken at midfield.
The stadium, so recently alive with applause and cheers
is dead now. The only audible sounds the gasps and sobs of a mother,
held by a father, held by a coach
and the whir of a helicopter engine.
As the aircraft reins up over the field,
every blade of grass bends low.
We won the game.