The Catch

Lovely afternoon photographing and filming in windy sunny Dollymount, North Dublin's stretch of sand and dune-life. Found this on the litter-strewn inland marsh near the road/bridge. I think it has a certain presence. And here's the poem I took that title from:

The Catch

Not a team player, even in a team of one,
he could rarely conscript himself
to that sweeping aside, great clear-felling of woes,

though he admired the way the oval ball
got reborn, wobbling out
from a thicket of muddy legs,

or how soccer's untouchable orb -- shrunk to a bright
dot on the drizzling screen --
touched like a bolt, brought the lounge to its feet,

and sometimes, channel-surfing,
he fell in with Wimbledon's sharp little grunts and thwacks
that made of the air something

furiously lashed and strung, harp of lines
firm enough to climb
to a kind of music: swing, kick, dance

out of civilised skin, into
instinct and brilliance -- worn green oblongs shot through
with jazzy, doodling grace notes, raptures

of disappointment, even their own
concise stretches of boredom boggy and grey
as infinity -- yet the lovely

footloose physics of it all
somehow seemed less riveting
than table soccer or slot-machines in Pierre's Pool Hall.

Something in him backed off
from gladiatorial ecstasies, or preferred them
filtered by distance: his dim

mouldy bedsit on Mountjoy suddenly aired
by one of those windy roars -- a ball missed
or saved in nearby Croker --

to which he'd raise a toast: Here's
to the king of whatever happened or didn't, the catch
in drifts of silence, cheers.


from my forthcoming collection, whose working title is Present Continuous