POEM OF THE MONTH

6. Keen
Football is bottle, youth’s playing fields of fame
And nerve its school: you have to risk that pass
Which intercepted makes you look the ass
Who gave the goal, the game, the world, away
But which accomplished wins your team the same;
You have to tackle anyone who smacks
Into the path you’ve set yourself, or cracks
Your bones of confidence, or soils your name

To be that shirty star, (eye) ball to ball,
His wages weighing in against the fines,
His needle sharper than his need to win,
His thirty million pounds of bottled gall
Dismissed for schoolboy fouls a hundred times:
Who chances all, and loses everything.

From "The Beautiful Game." A previous triptych from this sequence of nine was last July's poem of the month.

© G Calway 2002