Poppies for Goalposts

A poetic retelling of a fateful day

Poppies for Goalposts

Christmas in the killing fields
At home under the eaves
Poppies line the trenches
From the dig out players leave
Cautiously to no-mans land
Like never stepped before
The most tentative of friendlies
The opening of doors
Doors that can’t stay open
Such things, they aren’t allowed
There’s no profit in peacetime
With prophets far too proud
With managers on sidelines
Observing from afar
A beauty lost in distance
A game so close it jars
Clashes with the rifles
And the bullets on the range
For a day, treasured mementos
Are all that they exchange
With goals scored metaphoric
The score line never mattered
A post match meteoric
A brief time out, so shattered
With the passing of a century
Still we count the cost
But for one shining day in history
No one truly lost