Bobble-hatted football-coaching
Shouting from the side-lines
Lucky socks in howling gales
And dismal, calamitous score-lines
From whence I leapt enthusiastically
Whenever Saturday came
With his aid to follow my Grandads feet
Into the beautiful, beautiful game
Into the sun, the sleet, the hail, and the mud
We wouldn’t always see eye to eye
But sometimes we would
Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, the King
Hissing out from 8 tracks the side of a mountain
Banjos, 6 strings, pianos teeth
Singing with the angels – or down here merely shouting
Trawling out to Worsthorne
And slipping up to Colne
To buy my first machines
And pit against the wit of a novice’s poem
This raft now a craft that I often pursue
We don’t always see eye to eye
But sometimes we do
Filing in detail with vim and with vigour
While breeding budgerigars
Photostatting pages
Cross referencing in a aviary-shed at the end of the backyard
And now my line of work
Requires a level of organisation
And many is the time I smile
At the source of this documentation
This system has carried me here from boyhood
We couldn’t always see eye to eye
But sometimes we could
His Motor-vehicular prowess
Sits well and truly with my brother
And on vexing house-hold DIY matters
I simply smiled, defeatedly, at my mother
But I picked up a bike and I cycled for days
I picked up a pen and wrote of my ways
I kicked around a football then made for the crags and the fells
And my days are spent teaching efficiency to business personnel
All of this makes me
The man
That I am
We can’t always see eye to eye
But sometimes we can
9th March 2022