An Ode To My Fellow Hawkeye Fans

The last time the "Tiger Hawk" flag will fly for Iowa Football until next fall.  Photo by J. Berta.

Greetings All:

There will be over 40 bowl games this college football post-regular season.  There was only one I cared about, and deeply, The Rose Bowl.  Without going into detail, simply put:  Iowa lost.  They were soundly defeated by the Standford Cardinal team.  Their star player, #5, Christian McCaffrey, is a class act.  The same cannot be said for the Stanford Band.  

In any event, the game is over.  I allowed myself a bit of "mourning" and now it's onto more productive and necessary tasks.  I did, however, engage in a bit of "poetic therapy" by stringing a few nouns and verbs together.  I certainly feel better after I wrote it.  If you're an Iowa fan feeling low today, perhaps this will help you feel a bit better.  I hope it does.  Here's the poem:
 
An Ode To My Fellow Iowa Fans

Here’s to us, the Iowa fans.

With broken hearts, pieces shattered,

Mournfully dancing in the wind,

Mingling with rose petals.

From Pasadena to back home, we gathered.

To watch, to cheer, to hope, to believe,

To believe we’d win the “Grand Daddy of them all.”

The game began.  And we knew, knew all too soon,

This year was (again) not to be.

A few months’ ago, we were on top of the world.

Undefeated, riding high, above the fray,

Above the din of the haters and cynics and skeptics,

Who demanded our defeat!

Yet we kept winning, week after week,

All the way until,

Until the last ticks of the Lucas Field clock.

Our “consolation” prize?

The Rose Bowl, a return a quarter-century in the waiting!

And now, it’s over.

Victory eluded us. 

Our last gridiron win?

When the “T-Day” leftovers were in the fridge.

Yet to my fellow Hawkeye fans, grieve not!

Proudly sing the fight song with your voice,

And in your heart!

For know that our beloved school, is more, much more,

Than victories of fields and courts of “friendly strife.” 

There are the victories in the classroom, in the lab,

On the stage, and across the globe.

Know that majestic Kinnick Stadium stands with her sibling structures,

None finer than The Children’s Hospital.

From inside whose walls contests are waged that matter more than any game.

So here’s to you, my fellow Hawkeye fans.

For all that truly matters,

We’re champions eternal.

On Iowa, GO HAWKS!

Be well my friends,
Jeno