5/21/11 A high school track meet

It's like they know they're on display, they are healthy, athletic, strong, and they don't mind flaunting it. They stretch and practice their starts all up and down the midfield. They practice their hurdling form in lines of five like can-can dancers. They steal each other's sweatshirts and pack other stuff in it to make themselves look fat. They borrow each other's money, shirts, gum. They are sweet and young and playful, and it reminds me of a seal rookery and we are the grown-ups in the stands, the aluminum bleachers, but they, the young people, are down there like baby birds, like silly overgrown puppies, like new blades of grass swaying in the wind, Like cottonwood fluff, blowing about, looking for its ground.