Football Focus
 
Forty minutes in to the close season cup of tea  
and we’ve managed not to mention his Parkinson’s Disease,  
how much he lost on the scratch cards this week  
and his novel’s latest letter of rejection.  
We’re here to talk football, transfer speculation,  
next season’s prospects, local rivalry  
and the lack of loyalty in the modern game.  
His missus comes in to collect the cups  
and asks him if he’s asked me yet.   
He protests that it isn’t quite half-time  
and when it is he tells me they’ve got  
a bit of an issue with their daughter.
 
That bloke who’s refusing to move from the flat  
above the bargain shop that’s been closed down,  
who always wears a boiler suit, cowboy hat  
and orange high vis jacket, about 6o he is,  
not very big, used to be a talented musician,  
you must have seen him around. (I haven’t.)
Well, according to Anna, he’d asked her when  
the school term ended and she said tomorrow,  
they were all going up on the hills to picnic.  
He replied, I’d like to get to know you better,  
but your mother keeps you on a tight rein.  
 
I realise now that I’m not here wholly
on account of a shared passion for football,  
but in my capacity as foster-carer, adoptive father,
psychiatric nurse. They want the benefit  
of all the wisdom I’m thought to have accrued,
and I’ve come out with the wrong hat on.  
All I can think is definitely yellow, probably red card,  
though tight rein sounds a bit like might rain,  
so maybe he was saying the weather could be better.
If only we’d got VAR to zoom in on his lips
I might utter something unequivocal,
but you know when a streaker runs across the pitch
the cameras focus only on the football.

Raymond Miller

If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Raymond Miller  would be pleased to hear them.