The Garages

The Garages

The garages are gone that lined the car-park
(our playing fields of Eton); gable-ends
that served for goal-mouth, or chalk-marked
cricket-stumps, or other ball-game rebounds.

We vied in line to scale their nine-foot height:
a stepping back, a pause for sizing-up;
then loping run and springing lift to hit
the bricks for leverage, arms swung-up and slap

of hands on hard wall. We'd fall back
like down-flung salmon under heavy weirs;
to turn and this time surge from higher brick
with straining tendons primed like hot wires

and heave to new-found heights: the pantheon aloof;
to be Olympic gods who reign a conquered roof.