Tiger

I wrote this on a visit to Yorkshire Wildlife Park with my grandson Edward. He seems both fascinated and horrified by the black and white photos of dead tigers in India that are on the fence by the tiger enclosure.

Tiger

She pads down to the silent pool,
rippling stripes dip in and out
of sunlit patches lying in her path.

Slips in, jaws ease open to display
curved scimitars designed to rend
live flesh, lolls a tongue evolved to lick

the pulsing blood of freshly slaughtered prey.
Behind the cage, lenses point and children gasp.
She ignores them all as she ignores the dragonfly 

that hovers near her glorious head.
On the fence a sign displays old images;
an animal hung upside down, borne on poles.

Another skinned and proudly splayed
across a colonial floor. A small child
clutches his toy dinosaur and turns his eyes

from dead to living, then back to dead. 

Tim Fellows 2021

Image by Andreas Breitling from Pixabay

Ernie

Photo by Alan Roe

In memory of Ernie Moss, 1949-2021

Appearances for Chesterfield FC - 468
Goals for Chesterfield FC - 162

Ernie

We all remember.

The terraces, crumbling
under our frozen feet. Floodlights,
straining to light the four corners
of our hallowed field. Those minutes,
before gladiators appear, blue
scarves and hats streaming
in from Saltergate. Anticipation
rising like the steam
from the open roof of the toilet block.
Gloved hands, transferring
a 10p piece, receiving a programme
and some change. The metallic
clang, clang of the turnstile.

On the team sheet, one name,
one number, defines the team.
Lifts our hopes.

The local lad, leading from the front. 

His name,chanted by the massed choir 

on the Kop; his number, rising into the night sky,
propelled by will power. That hanging
moment, when time stood still,
the crowd breathing in. We had been
in this moment before. Many times.

His head, meeting the ball, arcing
it towards the enfolding net. The roar,
straining the rusting roof, rattling
the ancient stand.

The noise fading in our minds,
into legend. 

Tim Fellows 2020