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Richard Meier

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Local history

A council pitch, it was turfed with gravel.
All-weather in theory, a half-baked summer
would worry the soil beneath it to dust,
clouding to mither the shins of each tackler -
or else, in the rain, it would bind like sand,
softening, giving, as if making amends
for the concrete it mimed for most of the winter.
Players would come and go: blokes
who’d split from poxier kickabouts,
fairweather forwards who vanished each autumn
but turned up unmarked in the box
the next March. There was a hardcore though:
a caucus of paunches, all but numb
to their knees’ attempts to reason with them,
the guys who’d lasted a decade, before
the sourest of winters took them on,
and won, freezing so dourly as to admit
these few excuses: ligaments,
shin-splints, babysitters, overtime -
the game folding with a turn-out of four,
standing, chain-smoking by the centre spot:
each cloud of breath blanched by the floodlights,
held there a second, before clearing.

 

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