my cousin Mickey Abrams
always smaller than me
has revealed in a dream
his once unknown history
as a goalkeeper ….
it seems the school team
he played for was so superior
he had little to do
so size was neither
here nor there
however
as a goalkeeper
it seems the school team
he played for was so superior
he had little to do
so size was neither
here nor there
howeveronce in match when
they were leading
my cousin posed far outside
his goal dreaming as ever
of other things
when a shout alerted him
to his proper business
the opposing centre forward
clocking a yawning net
lobbed the ball forward
Mickey desperately ran backwards
and bless us all
caught the ball
the only time he said
he ever was
the hero of the hour
nnnnnn
when my Aunt Dinah died
she still had the small ceramic model
of a hornpiping sailor
which arty Mickey had made
when at school
later in life he abandoned
life on terra firma
built a boat and sailed
single-handed
here there and everywhere
we never lost touch
his letters came from
The Azores or The Florida Keys
or Le Bassin de L’Arsenal de Paris
or wherever he’d breezed
eventually they ceased
and I feared he might
have been lost at. Sea
sunk without trace
you might say
his life a sailor’s yarn
as true as his dream
of saving his team
from sinking
.
Jeff Cloves
,,,,,,,
*The goalkeeper’s fear of the penalty
novel by Peter Handke 1970
film by Wim Wenders 1972
.
.