He Had It All Poem by Paul Reed

My boyhood days
Stood on crumbling concrete tiers
Amongst the gathered mufflers and caps
The brave hope against the inevitable;
Intoxicating aromas of pipe smoke
Bovril and it's wisping steam
Carried away into the winter sky;
The bright piercing of the floodlights
Holding the night at bay
And shining on the pitch green, so green;
But most of all, the roar
When Wearside joined together and pooled emotions
And fused the sound that rose from the belly, through the heart
And out through throats to shake the very air
With a mighty reverberance that trembled the cowering
And stirred the blood,
A noise like no other;
This land where a hero is forever
And a legend a little longer,
This land that you walked away from
To what you thought were greener pastures
In more important places;
You could have been a hero
You could have been a legend
And now you are nothing.