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Poems tagged ‘Walking Football’

Stratford Park Theatre of Dreams

Stuart Butler

Tuesday, October 31st, 2023

I love Wednesday night’s walking football:
The gathering dusk of late October:
Floodlights lighting the way to goal,
While a moon rises high in the sky,
Illuminating childhood memories
Of yesteryear’s Autumn Almanack:
Playing marbles, conkers, knock-door-runaway,
Or kicking a football under street lamps,
Or collecting wood for the street bonfire,
Always ceremonially lit, each year,
By George Hunt, the Swindon Town right back
(Who also owned a car and a garage,
Down the road at number 53),
Holding aloft, his brandish of authority.

And this is what passes through your mind
As you pass the ball or take your turn in goal,
At Walking Football on Wednesday evenings,
At Stratford Park’s Theatre of Dreams:
‘For it’s all part of our Autumn Almanac’.

But, ‘Coming events cast shadows before’,
And next week we football-hibernate:
Playing inside in the heat of the night,
As we measure the slow trudge of winter
Through the darkness of the coming months –
Until the moon of the vernal equinox:
When, once more, it will be Happy Wednesdays,
And the Onion Bag will swell again.

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Happy Wednesdays

Stuart Butler

Thursday, February 2nd, 2023

It must have been 1965,
We were having a lunchtime kick-about.
‘It’s Good News Week’ by Hedgehoppers’ Anonymous
Was playing on someone’s transistor
Just behind the goal nearest the school,
Someone was puffing out on the wing,
And crossed hopefully towards the edge of the box,
Where I had strayed, and where I stood,
Predicting the precise path of the ball.
It came, as anticipated, at waist height:
I leapt from the ground before the ball’s arrival,
Levitating horizontally a metre up in the air,
To meet the ball on the volley,
And send it hurtling into the top left hand corner.
I landed on the ground, elated,
It was the best goal I had ever scored,
A perfect harmony of prediction, execution and ambience,
And it was all so perfect that I didn’t even celebrate,
I just stood there in a Zen state of bliss,
Knowing that such an immaculate conception
Only happens once in A Good News Week Lifetime.
But now we are starting a Rodborough Walking Football Group,
And on Wednesday mornings along Butterrow,
I walk the talk and talk the walk
With a perfect harmony of diverse friends,
And, sometimes, it’s like being thirteen again,
You watch yourself pass, move, cross, shoot, score,
And you stand there in a Zen state of bliss,
Knowing that such an immaculate conception
Happens every happy Wednesday morning
Eleven to noon, along the lane at Rodborough.

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Source: https://footballpoets.org/news/poem-tags/walking-football/