You swore at me and hurled your ring into the pond
then drove off back to London “for some bloody fun”
with friends whose Chelsea coven held you in its bond.
I was next in, scored twelve and hit the winning run.

The beers were long and cool, the Captain shook my hand.
Dusk shaded in, a final liquid blackbird sang.
A coughing tractor crawled a strip of fading land.
An owl flew low across the pitch, a church bell rang.

Two muddy urchins with a shrimp-net dredged the pond
their hopeful piping rippling in the cooling air
while you choked on exhaust at Guildford or beyond
along your golden road to Knightsbridge and Sloane Square.

Another world and just two perfect hours away
your eyes had been bright green. Or brown. Or were they blue?
I still recall the details of that Summer day
so much more clearly than I now remember you.

*****

Martin Parker writes: “The only point I might add is my hope that if the muddy urchins’ dredging efforts were rewarded they were not too disappointed to learn that the ring’s diamond might not have been a real one! The intervening sixty-five-plus years have, mercifully, erased the fact that I may have been nothing but a cheapskate!”

‘Man of the Match’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Martin Parker is a writer of mainly light and humorous verse much of which has appeared in national publications including The Spectator, The Oldie and The Literary Review. In 2008 Martin founded the quarterly light verse webzine, Lighten Up Online at www.lightenup-online.co.uk, now edited by Jerome Betts. His website at www.martinparker-verse.co.uk gives details and excerpts from his two “hopefully humorous and only occasionally wrily depressing books”.

Photo: “Village cricket” by Peter Curbishley is licensed under CC BY 2.0.