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Saturday at Barracks Lane

Alex Saynor

Monday, November 26th, 2018

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 As Welcome as the sight of allotment smoke in December,
a quiet bonfire in the winter stillness,
are the compressed distances of Sports Report,
fingers hardened in the dusk after hours
of working the ground, hat pulled down and boots muddied,
hour upon hour of solitude with little or nothing
to eat or drink, stepping home to the warmth
of football results, the heating on,
monastic beer or mulled wine in the silence
as lingering scraps of yellow light dip beyond the horizon.
You think of all the vegetables and no contemporary news
infiltrates the misty winterscape, the warmth you create
in the coldness, the clothes that insulate,
radio silence to guard the heart
against the moment – a tentative nursery garden
of all that’s left to the imagination.

Notes

A poem about not making it to the game, for whatever reason, but listening to the radio and enjoying simple pleasures if you can.

Barracks lane is a Thames Valley allotment site.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/saturday-at-barracks-lane/