All Yesterday’s Games
¶ 1
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The ghosts of yesterday’s football
flit and start, flickering, teasing.
How time sped, arching, arrowing
away like some desperate, miscued shot
¶ 2
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Lost in the rituals of endless games,
the intimacy of the immediate,
unwatched, football slowly took its leave,
pocketing our youth for good measure
¶ 3
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There he is again, still with us,
laughing into the post-match twilight,
victorious arm around your shoulder
handful of shinpad, mouthguard, tape
¶ 4
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Preserved in the aspic of this memory
mouthy, moustachioed, vibrant
now destined to replay the same move
in the restricted reach of my recall
¶ 5
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Where were those far-flung, forgotten fields
edging the industrial estates
the expansion suburbs, the freeways
bumpy, windswept, reclaimed, sloping…
¶ 6
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Fortresses to breach then run
each blurs into one in its sameness;
unfinished club house, damp concreted
claustrophobia of the dressing room
¶ 7
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Thousands of minutes gone, unrecorded,
distilled into an essence of experience.
Combatants, once ragged in bone and boot,
scattered to the mercies of uncertain futures
Great imagery and lines Andrew