A neat turn on the trad dialogue poem, Max, & a little sharper as such this time...
oug
On May 7, 2014, at 4:09 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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.
>
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
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would you
care to be more
precise about whatever
it is you are
saying, I said
Bill Manhire
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