Instead of watching another football game
I excuse myself, leave my wife and daughter
in front of the big screen,
shuffle as unobtrusively as possible
into the bedroom to watch Great Migrations –
Race to Survive on the little TV atop the dresser.

I’m not much of a football fan, really.
I’m not as manly as I know I should be,
I’m thinking, hoping my pretty wife
isn’t looking at me disdainfully
as I slink away.

If this had been back in college
when she was palling around
with big Don, her macho football player friend,
more than eager and ready
for him to ask her out, you know
I’d be right in there watching the stupid game
with her, cheering the team on,
slapping 5 for each goal scored, perhaps
even downing a beer or two in the frenzy of testosterone.
All this, of course, to show her, to prove to her,
that I’m a man, yes indeed, a real man,
a football fan, a football loving fan man.

But for right now, for tonight,
I’ll hide away in the bedroom
watching in complete fascination
as the Okavango Zebra herd stops at nothing,
tramping continuously
over ancient migration paths,
risking lion attacks and disease,
starvation, cheetahs and hyenas,
to reach the salt lick
and the river beyond that simply to mate.