Doug’s Deeds, Pete’s Poem

Peter Langston | February 26, 2023

SCG 100th Test - SCG Museum 2012. Doug Walters Test Cap from Australia v WI, February 1969, when he became the first to make a double and single century in the same Test (242 and 103x).

It was my first attendance at a Test match, aged 12. I scored the double in tally marks in the back of my previous year’s maths exercise book. Wished I still had it!

In front of the cap is the coming of age poem I wrote about the event.

When Dougie Did The Double

Summer blazed in grainy black & white,

until I walked through a TV window

past stands of old corrugated iron and older wood,

into the vivid colours of my youth

and found a new home between

the Randwick and Paddington ends.

White skins were pink and brown

and black came in different shades

as a battle between willow and leather

made the sounds of resonant gun shots 

across an oval billiard table

of deep green, light green mown magic.

I passed my first Test watching a first.

National service done but, he still stood to attention

to clip laconically to leg or pull with surprising violence

and all recorded in scribbled tallies

in the vacant back pages of 6th class maths.

Such days, such firsts

never to be repeated

never to be forgotten.

Heroes dressed as heroes are,

all stains and flaws lost in the whiteness,

all the same, all different,

all heroes through twelve year old senses

fresh to colour and sounds and smells

too big to imagine or rich to swallow

without savouring the sensation.

Cut grass aromas new just now;

a bobbing towelling hat mosaic

in hues so bright I still squint;

the cheering politeness to both victor and vanquished;

and a crowd wit still entertaining

down this winding corridor of years.

Wonders not lost on an aging boy’s spirit.

I was there.

I still am

Peter Langston Poetry

Peter has just released his new book is Poems At A Social Distance and costs $20 including postage in Australia. It has 95 pages and 52 poems, including three poems for kids.

“Welcome to Poems At A Social Distance, a title that stems from a series of gigs of the same name, streamed live on social media during the first height of everybody’s favourite pandemic. It was a catchy title for a time when catching was an ever present theme.

In a poet’s truth, its intention was to allude to the deliberate gap which my capacity for expressing ideas has always stood me on the other side of. I like that gap. It's both a comfort and buffer against social impertinences I would rather observe than participate in but there are times when bridges form and I must cross or be invaded. That’s when I write.

Click to buy here