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Football Time

Stuart Butler

Thursday, June 1st, 2000

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 I was never
That close to my Dad.
He was a Chindit.
And
Fighting behind Japanese lines
Gave hime
20 years of
Mood swings
And irrational
Bursts of unpredicatable
Temper.
But one Sunday
Afternoon
After the Pub.
He taught me
How
To trap the ball.
To kill it stone dead.
How to use
Your brain
And body
Together
In
one movement
And so control
The world.
And when I played
In the street
I found that if
I dropped my shoulder
And wriggled
My hips
I had a natural
Untaught body swerve.
I could go past Players
As if they weren’t there.
I could get
To the bye-line
And put the ball
On to the centre-
forward’s
Head.
And when I see
A match
Today
On a big ground
Or a rec.
And a player has a number 7
On his back.
And he traps
The ball
Wriggles his hips,
Beats the full-back
And crosses the ball.
My Dad’s alive again.
And I’m 5 again.
That’s why I like football.
It plays tricks
with time.

© Stuart Butler – 1997

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/football-time/