One on One

It is the nature of this game to want possession

then to want to give it up

to get it back so you can give it up again.



 Nobody stops to ponder the ball, the way John Keats

pondered a cue ball’s “roundness,

smoothness, volubility”: its joy in being hit.



Imagine the score is tied, and I take the ball away

In order to sketch it, or incorporate it

Into some kind of quasi-tribal dance routine...



I thought we had agreed to play. I thought you said

We’d play and play all day, beating and being beaten,

Taking turns at losing, learning its advantages



for a young man’s character, then changing fates.

What kind of game is this, your going away forever,

sending word, years later, that you’d died?