BOWLING by Pedro Leon

LAWN BOWLING by Pedro Leon

(An attempt at versifying with references to

Richmond Green team-mates and fellow bowlers)

Is there something more grand than to put

a few bowls on the jack? Can one have greater

pleasure than to play as a team and to take

proper grass and to use the right weight and

perhaps, just perhaps, get two ends

when one plays the great Al or the fellows from

Milton who are gentle and nice, but dreadfully

lethal when you give them an inch? Is the winter

less cold? Or is just wishful thinking that good

old Richmond Green feels so warm and inviting,

that we risk idiot drivers and the occasional winter

delays? But, of course, it's the people!! It's Miana and

her welcoming crew and the free entertainment bi-weekly

provided by Frank the Glaswegian and Ron the Oxbridgean

who forever and ever keeps calling the shots at the top of

his voice. And there's Rick, the quiet maestro who loves his

bananas and Helen who's kinder and more generous than most

and Roger the fellow uproarious with a heart made

of gold. And there's Bob and there's Anna, who're ever so

keen they arrive from the wilds of the north, no matter the snow,

the wind and the sleet. And there's William the Donald who

deserves to be knighted and surely, quite rightly, soon will.

And there're more, many more who're prepared to undertake

the long drive, from Milton and Burlington even, and

spend their six hours a week, battling Ferguson or Horn,

in pursuit of that "simplest" of pleasures, just to put a few

bowls on the jack.

After months of enforced hibernation, there is light

and there's sun and the promise of bowling on grass.

There is talk, often heard, of the "lands of the wood",

somewhere far, in the fabled domains of Down Under,

where the grass is so supple and kind, that the bowls

(or the 'woods' as they're called in those lands)

make their way on their own with the greatest of ease,

on a velvety surface of quality unheard and unmatched.

There is also, quite sadly, the sober perception

that to bowl on the emerald meadows of Ont

in late spring, where we heave and we throw and

we attempt decent draws, is at best not a treat

and it often results in a shoulder or hip out of joint.

But we do persevere, for we love this quaint art and

we know in our hearts that there's pleasure supreme

in that "simplest" of tasks (so the experts insist)

of just putting a bowl on the jack.