FLANNEL WHITE

My father's journey through life

from school to war to office

was just a sequence of obedience

while others did the thinking.

 

No sooner home from work

than meal finished, off to play.

Sundays at the cricket crease

the only place he wished to be.

 

A catalogue of parks and pitches

we were driven to on sufferance,

mum to make tea and sandwiches

in pavilions with other wives;

 

me enduring vistas of boredom

for a ritual as slow as chess.

But when I notice coloured kit

these days on television screens

 

I remember lazy afternoons

of flannel white and flying cork,

striped deckchairs, summer sun,

long silences exploding into action.

 

Pulsar Poetry, 2020, Ed David Pike.