Blocks and Balls and Fag Packets

 Blocks and Balls and Fag Packets

 

I was fired from the castle project,

though, in truth, I’d sagged off a bit,

having last summer been instructed to fit

an engine to a piece of card,

all superglued; crusted fingers getting hard.

He peered from beneath his undercut perm,

parted bangs, showing fangs

in disagreement with my modus operandi,

‘I want blocks,’ he insisted,

and I recalled the time I’d resisted

a dreadful father’s hard wisdom

that I chucked away my collection of fag packets.

We kicked football. ‘You’re rusty,’ I said

as he hoofed the ball straight at my head,

and something bounced up and down the hard core,

missing about as many as he scored,

until I’m shot, panting on the floor

and seventy pounds plus for blocks or more.

‘We can use cardboard, sustainable, environment,”

I’d parroted and he almost scoffed,

because he’s older now and reaches the shoulder

I used to carry him on,

when his legs were too weak to walk upon,

or he would stumble in my wake.

“Save this, Grandad,’ he snapped,

the ball underneath his right foot and trapped,

stepover, Cruyff turn, nutmeg and watched me flap

like some overweight stuffed Great Tit,

drove the ball so close I felt the spray of winter rain,

some years fly pass and some remain.

Then, with a steely glare, I was sacked,

over wasteful blocks that I refused to back;

he gave his hair a mocking flick,

and called me out on it.

‘You feel sad, now” he guesses, correct:

I'm thinking of all those fag packets I didn't collect.