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Good Afternoons

Stuart Butler

Wednesday, January 12th, 2022

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 I felt as though I were in a poem:
‘Afternoons’ by Philip Larkin –
I was off to sheltered accommodation
To see my mother-in-law (91),
Wishing a ‘Good afternoon’ to residents
Out for their slow afternoon constitutional;
Then out for a walk to Clifton Downs,
Crossing endless empty football pitches,
Sitting on the occasional bench
To read the newspaper piecemeal,
Glimpsing my teenage self in front of me,
Shimmying down the muddied touchline,
But wondering if an empty football pitch
Is still a football pitch when empty,
Apart from the rise and fall of gnats,
And the whitened lines left by rollers,
And the ghosts of misty memories
On a January afternoon.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/good-afternoons/