You see her there
not far in first fall
light like summer still
bright slanting down far

over El Camino Real
in the distance, but here
the world rests still green
turf cropped like soft

fuzz, and there she runs
and feints, the ball close
to her thighs, then she lets
it drop softly down to her

feet, black cleats, boots
and the defender right on

her, knees brushing back
of her legs, but her forehead
glistens, the dark hair pulled
back, then she gets some room,

all she needs an open foot,
no one wishes to give her,
but soon you see, hear
the perfect kick through the ball

and you know she’s scored, crowds
erupt, and you smiling too,
Tara R, the one all know
as the star.  But later you see

her running upfield away, far
like watching the Pacific shine away.

***

Daniel Picker won The Dudley Review Poetry Prize at Harvard University. Daniel is the author of a book of poems, “Steep Stony Road”(Viral Cat Press of SF). Prose works by Daniel have appeared in The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, The Sewanee Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The East Hampton Star, The Oxonian Review of Oxford University, The Stanford Daily, The Almanac of Menlo Park, CA, The Irish Journal of American Studies(IRL), The Haddon Herald, The Princeton Packet, Poetry magazine(Chicago), Harvard magazine(online), and more.  Short stories, works of fiction by Daniel have appeared in The Abington Review of Penn State Univ., The Kelsey Review of Central NJ, The 67th Street Scribe of CUNY, A New Ulster in Northern Ireland, Scribe of Macaulay Honors College, The Porter Gulch Review, Fusion magazine at Berklee College of Music, and more. Daniel’s poems have appeared in Sequoia: The Stanford Literary Magazine, Fusion at Berklee, The Arlington Literary Journal in Virginia, Soundings East, Elysian Fields Quarterly: The National Baseball Journal, Folio, Dial Tone at Stanford, Vermont Literary Review, Ireland of the Welcomes magazine, and more. Daniel received a fellowship from The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and The FAWC.