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From the Baseball Ground

Brian

Sunday, February 6th, 2022

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 The cattle and their
drool and tremor rock the earth as
they follow across the field
and when I turn, to stare them down they
gaze back, an insolent wall
and approach again as I pull back.
I ask which is more fearful
to think of them as animal or meat;
an embedded sequence in my head helps quell the fear,
to take my mind elsewhere,
McGovern, Carlin, O’Hare, Hector, Hinton,
McGovern, Carlin, O’Hare, Hector, Hinton,
slows my breathing, and I realise that the names
so ingrained, although buried for years,
are the devotion which surfaces when fright takes hold,
a mantra as deep as the Baseball Ground mud.
They halt, their steam rises and
a sound spreads
like the silence of the crowd
when Terry Hennessey was carried from the pitch
with his arms round two men’s necks
and thirty thousand held their breath.

Notes

My Dad used to take me to the Baseball Ground when I was small, we stood on the Pop Side, very happy and deeply ingrained memories.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/from-the-baseball-ground-2/