The Summer Olympics
These are the trials that time men’s soles
On track as black as smoking coals:
Mettle marked by meters’ measure,
Some men melt beneath the pressure
And leave the field with blistered feet,
Burned in the qualifying heat.
Campbell F. Scribner is a professor of education at Ohio Wesleyan University and a lifelong admirer of James Thurber, E.B. White, and Ogden Nash. His poetry has previously appeared in Light.