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Football knowledge is recast as a lesson in how to force passage through darkness.

The page is short, but it does real symbolic work. `halfback` and `Rectory night Practice` anchor the line in Catholic-school athletics, while `punch holes in the dark` turns practice into a larger method for moving through fear or obscurity.

Three lines and a title that punch above their length: 'As A halfback I knew early / how to punch holes in the / dark.' The football image of breaking through a defensive line becomes a method for cutting through obscurity or fear, and the title 'Rectory night Practice' grounds it in Catholic-school athletics practiced after dark by the rectory. A compact seed where sport and dread share one motion.