At the Football
Welsh League, Division Three
The bar was hallmarked by its desolation.
Our few selves, staccato barman and a guy
by the far wall, wrapped in what seemed
some personal cloud, over crisps and a half.
We cut down a footpath to the ground,
crossing an old and grassy railway track.
Sunshine, falling on to a squelchy pitch.
No grandstand, just a few benches dotted.
Then, soundlessly, he was beside me,
the guy from the bar. For a while I thought
he might be mute, but then our talk,
of games and players, limped to timid life.
A trauma victim? Breakdown? Loss?
The thought seemed irresistible
that here was someone finding a way back,
on a mild afternoon, beside a muddy pitch.
I was never the one in whom he would confide.
That day I was a simple milestone on his way.
I hoped it was like coming across such a stone,
along a country road, sunlit, slow, unthreatening.
Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet whose work has been published widely in Britain and the USA, with occasional forays into Canada, Ireland, India and Mauritius.