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Pictures of Matchstick Men

Peter Goulding

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2004

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Pat Dolan, manager of Cork,
Watched his matches like a hawk.
He kept the box upon the shelf
And sometimes, to amuse himself,
He’d take it down with secret pleasure,
And count them slowly at his leisure.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Pat Fenlon, too, it’s strange to say
Had matches secreted away,
And like his namesake and arch-foe,
He took them down each week or so,
And with a mathematical flair,
Enumerated them with care.

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 But suddenly a row blew up,
A tempest in a coffee cup,
Between these fervent match-collectors,
Seeking hard to mis-direct us.
Each claimed the other’s total count
Was smaller than their own amount.

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 The independent judge thus sat
To referee ‘tween Pat and Pat.
He counted out each alpine pile,
Double-checking all the while,
And then announced, with voice detached
That both men were quite evenly matched.

© Peter Goulding 1st November 2004

Notes

Shels 0 Cork City 0

Source: https://footballpoets.org/poems/pictures-of-matchstick-men/