Jeu De Poeme
When we batted a bald ball, fit only to be
a dog chew in your view, back and forth
across buckled asphalt on a tennis court
long abandoned to plantain weeds
and crabgrass tufting fissured cracks
zig-zagging exotic boundaries, your view
was nowhere in view. Our sole audience
might’ve been a glance from a trucker paused
long enough to spit over a meaty arm
at a stop sign before gunning off
in a gout of greasy smoke to a job of work.
Small lumps of rotting mush dotting
the distance between posts with cranks
rusted shut were remnants of nets,
or perhaps dead birds returning to earth,
and tied-together strings strung instead
were too gossamer thin for sweat-stung eyes
to discern them in a blur of frenetic dashing.
Under or over, like before and after,
were words unnoticed and never spoken
in the fury of our play because our ball,
caroming off every pothole or frost heave,
obeyed only the necessary effects
of random causes whose indifference
to intended directions in the wild swings
of our scuffed racquets we accepted
as the game played for itself. Since Latin
dignifies such play with the name of Love,
we called out “l’oeuf!, l’oeuf!” in a parody
of scoring when the ball flew rogue
through holes in rusted chicken wire
that made no effort to constrain its flight
but allowed a rank sumac thicket
to do work its sagging loops had forgotten
to let grape and bindweed vines weave
tendrils wherever blind touch wills it.
Like your Savior said he’d explain
the reason for his riddles but once, I’ll tell
for you that kernel of truth lurking in
that jest we jeered to ourselves alone:
our ugly panting game of guttural grunts
and foul oaths was nothing like happy
back-and-forth whaps and soft clay thuds
beating a trochaic meter, or volleys
in metronomic monotony that elicit
gentle “ah’s” floating from lofty bleachers
like “om’s” whispered mindfully
in Unitarian pews as you swing your heads
back and forth with open mouths
awaiting a lost host. No, our graceless
scrambles like monkeys sidling sideways
in their cages, hooting the name an egg
meaning nothing in the ruins of a court,
were no more your game of tennis
than these words are a poem to score.
a dog chew in your view, back and forth
across buckled asphalt on a tennis court
long abandoned to plantain weeds
and crabgrass tufting fissured cracks
zig-zagging exotic boundaries, your view
was nowhere in view. Our sole audience
might’ve been a glance from a trucker paused
long enough to spit over a meaty arm
at a stop sign before gunning off
in a gout of greasy smoke to a job of work.
Small lumps of rotting mush dotting
the distance between posts with cranks
rusted shut were remnants of nets,
or perhaps dead birds returning to earth,
and tied-together strings strung instead
were too gossamer thin for sweat-stung eyes
to discern them in a blur of frenetic dashing.
Under or over, like before and after,
were words unnoticed and never spoken
in the fury of our play because our ball,
caroming off every pothole or frost heave,
obeyed only the necessary effects
of random causes whose indifference
to intended directions in the wild swings
of our scuffed racquets we accepted
as the game played for itself. Since Latin
dignifies such play with the name of Love,
we called out “l’oeuf!, l’oeuf!” in a parody
of scoring when the ball flew rogue
through holes in rusted chicken wire
that made no effort to constrain its flight
but allowed a rank sumac thicket
to do work its sagging loops had forgotten
to let grape and bindweed vines weave
tendrils wherever blind touch wills it.
Like your Savior said he’d explain
the reason for his riddles but once, I’ll tell
for you that kernel of truth lurking in
that jest we jeered to ourselves alone:
our ugly panting game of guttural grunts
and foul oaths was nothing like happy
back-and-forth whaps and soft clay thuds
beating a trochaic meter, or volleys
in metronomic monotony that elicit
gentle “ah’s” floating from lofty bleachers
like “om’s” whispered mindfully
in Unitarian pews as you swing your heads
back and forth with open mouths
awaiting a lost host. No, our graceless
scrambles like monkeys sidling sideways
in their cages, hooting the name an egg
meaning nothing in the ruins of a court,
were no more your game of tennis
than these words are a poem to score.
