The Bowling Sonnet

When I first came to Utah in 1998, I took a poetry class from a formalist who required everyone to write sonnets. I think it was the first sonnet I had ever written. It was about bowling. It went something like this:

Catholic Night at Big Junction Bowling Alley

All the grown up choir boys are here,
wearing crosses and Virgin Mary pins.
Each tells the story of his highest score,
like a sinner taking measure of his sins.
For each of them, league night is confession,
the trespasses of their days made tangible.
When pins fall, it's not bowling, it's redemption,
a need that Hail Marys can't fulfill.
Every Strike dissolves a strike (adultery?),
and every Spare spares them a wrong they've done.
For every ball they throw they feel less guilty.
And each bowls against his sins: one on one.
And every frame they play enacts their goal:
The fallen swept away and brought back whole.

Condiment may feel that sonnets are too high brow for this low brow endeavor, but the Bowling makes the sonnet middlebrow.
I plan on taking Son bowling this weekend, so hopefully I'll have some news soon. Some real low brow bowling news, I mean.