lacrosse field, hot day, grass.

Painting day.

Field manager, team, assist each other.

Strategize, prepare equipment, travel.

We me

t 11:45

,

painting since about 9:00.

Tries to paint about two fields.

Painting robot, iPad, satellite.

Turf lacrosse, wood chips.

I take off my shoes

,

surface more firm,

ball movement, stays cooler.

Press box linking Morris Williams and Koskinen.

Mowing design from above

,

creative.

What fires him up: a good product,

players, safety.

These poems are important because they give voice to the people and the place that make Duke football possible, yet often go unseen. They transform routine maintenance—the mowing, painting, watering—into acts of devotion and artistry. Through John’s eyes and the field’s imagined voice, the poems remind us that Wallace Wade is more than a backdrop for the game; it’s a living surface shaped by care, rhythm, and labor. The sounds, textures, and emotions of fieldwork become a kind of poetry themselves—every brushstroke and mower pass part of a larger composition. For the workers, these poems honor their craft and the intimacy they share with the field; for Duke football, they reveal the heartbeat beneath the spectacle, where resilience, precision, and pride quietly keep the team’s home alive.

John W:

He eats lunch in the shop, tools lining the walls.
He talks about the grass like it’s alive—
how it breathes, how it fights, how it forgives.
He says Bermuda likes being beat up.
He laughs, guessing temperatures under grow tarps.
He works in heat, in quiet, in care.
He is Duke blue, painted in patience. A man with an incredible flare. 

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