My father never watched me play football

so at night I contrived

to be both myself on the pitch

and my Dad in the stand -

an early exponent of simulation.

 

From up on The Holte dramas unfold:

the  flawless green flooded light

flanked by silhouetted masses;

darkness punctuated by cigarette flashes.

 

He'll have noted the significance,

as I seize upon a loose ball,

that possession accrued by chance

and wasn't gained by hard work

or even astute positional sense.

 

I'm the creative playmaker

in the hole behind the strikers;

tackling is for the lesser gifted

water-carriers and workers.

 

Stifling the echoes of yesterday's quarrels

I play a quick one-two with an accomplice.

I'm equally accomplished with either boot,

the upshot of solitary pursuits

in our back garden from the age of three.

 

Good footballers keep the ball on the deck

and I do, skating past desperate limbs,

the final defender left sprawling

as I feint one way and go the other -

I'm into the box with only the goalie to beat.

 

Then the ground gapes

and the holes appear, rectangular-shaped,

large enough to swallow me up.

I put on the brakes

and the ball rolls safe

into the goalkeeper's arms.

 

He used to say I lacked

perseverance and focus,

but I replayed this fixture

every night for a decade.