|

Man With A Pipe

Greg Freeman

Tuesday, July 7th, 2015

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Definition of the ultimate stoic?
A season ticket holder at Stockport.
Apparently insouciant amid
rain and defeats, shouting nothing,
just chewing furiously
on his briar, the only sign perhaps
of piqued pride. Everyone bruises.
Years later we learned
of the grudge match behind closed doors.
If County had been given a hiding
he handed one out to his missus,
even though she’d learned
the hard way, don’t ask the score.
One look from him, and she knew.
Old Bob? We wouldn’t have guessed,
though he never stopped for a drink
in the clubhouse, but always limped
away on his stick, into the darkness,
whistle blown, floodlights extinguished,
maddened by another humbling at home.

Notes

Derived from a Poetry School exercise with Tim Dooley, in which we had to include five specific words in a poem. One was “Stockport”. I can’t remember what the other four were !

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/man-with-a-pipe/