Thanks Max I enjoy these family snippets cheers P
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 07 May 2014 11:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: 'Lawn Bowls and Trophies' (revised)
Lawn Bowls and Trophies
Father, many decades dead,
visited last night,
stood at the foot of my bed;
still just fifty-nine,
not long retired,
ready for the bowling club,
trousers cream, shirt white;
face tanned except where
his spectacles perched,
keen to be skipper
at yet another tourney.
Returned without a trophy,
he'd be keen to say why,
keen to be ready for next time,
most likely with the same
three mates of his chosen team.
What would he say to me?
'Son, I guess you never all
this time took up lawn bowls.
What became of my set of four?
you know how fine they were -
polished, never scratched,
packed in their leather satchel
with their soft shammy
safe from harm. No Kiwi
bowler ever had a set
better than mine. The length
of the country, Northland
to chilly Southland
I'd led my team, done well
also in the Singles' (wryly
not winning selection
for the host country
in the Commonwealth Games).
'What became of my bowls?
Not in the Austin's luggage-boot,
still, when your mother sold it!?'
'Dad, you know I was overseas,
missed your funeral, left
every task to my grieving
sister and our Mum.
There wasn't much you left
to be tidied up. Those bowls
went to a player you liked
for a price you'd have approved.
Your silver trophies, tarnished
badly, came later to me. I'd
rather they had vanished.
Never a sportsman, I did
learn later in life why
all that mattered to you -
the skill, the concentration,
rising to the occasion,
the slow beers of the post-mortem;
Mum and I waiting outside
the Grosvenor in the Austin -
she had shandy, I lemonade.'
'But - that day in the sixties
I came downstairs for the team
breakfast in that Northland
hotel, and my heart stopped,
that's where I'm stuck;
and you, son, in Scotland,
young then and half-estranged,
or where you are now,
looking back puzzled,
ageing yet - as I never did.'
Father, I see you still
gaze fixed on your last bowl
slowing on the green
completing its last curve
near its goal
with a toppling swerve
almost there, shouldering
aside your opponent's bowl;
you tiptoeing forward
behind it, shammy in hand
gesturing it towards
triumph at the far end.
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