The grass doesn’t even grow where he stands on the pitch.
- Brazilian proverb.
In the schoolyard an afterthought,
last one standing after the captains’ picks,
the flabby or uncoordinated one,
fit only to fill a space between the jackets or sticks.
Later to metamorphose into an acrobat, gymnast,
air surfer, an exotic yellow bird or black panther.
Hands-on custodian, lord of the penalty area.
A man of mystery, aloof, impassive, a lone eagle,
prey to rituals and superstitions, wizard of mind games.
Master of innovation (Yashin’s rushing off his line,
Neuer’s sweeper-keeper, El Loco Higuita’s scorpion kick.)
Shoot-out hero, fall guy (a hapless De Gea or Calamity James.)
Ageless cap-centurion (a Shilton or Buffon, a Jennings or Zoff.)
Poets, pontiffs and philosophers practised that eccentric art:
Pope-to-be Wojtyla and poet Yevtushenko guarded the net;
Camus commanded the box and thought outside of it;
Nabokov, self-confessed daydreamer in a Cambridge goalmouth;
and cúlbáire Kavanagh, seduced from his goal
by the music of a Monaghan ice-cream van.
But last one standing no longer a stigma;
the keeper the chosen one, his gloves, his gleaming shirt
a different colour from the others, unnumbered;
first name on the team sheet, above the rest.
Michael Durack lives in Co. Tipperary, Ireland. He is the author of a memoir in prose and poems, Saved to Memory: Lost to View (2016) and three poetry collections, Where It Began (2017), Flip Sides (2020) and This Deluge of Words (2023) published by Revival Press.