Franciscan Court
Everything then was the splashing of pools
and soccer balls bouncing down the street.
Jordan had moved
and Lee.
Baseball had shattered too many relations
with their aged replacements, the new neighbors.
and so my brother and I were left--
the youth amidst old men with perfect grass,
old ladies with cats for husbands and kids and blankets and love,
their cars armed with banshees
would our sport tap their mirror frames.
Our pool in the back was safe though,
with its groaning spring board and humming Arnold,
his tentacle legs swishing in the blue cold
patrolling the waters for leaves and fungi
that would somehow find the peace to settle
on the pale, cracked underbelly
amidst cannonballs and flips and dives into
our small ocean of tranquility--
our bodies cutting into the lapping currents, their spread
slapping tiles and flowing over like our laughs
that reverberated in that court where,
outside our homemade fence,
rotten fingers like old maple branches pried open
second story blinds to peer at the noise like an infestation
of gout in their retirement. It was our revenge for having to
pull the newspaper from our plastic yellow bat.
My brother and I tugged the San Ramon Valley Times out,
a newsprint eulogy to the tennis ball
that would never fly as far again.
and soccer balls bouncing down the street.
Jordan had moved
and Lee.
Baseball had shattered too many relations
with their aged replacements, the new neighbors.
and so my brother and I were left--
the youth amidst old men with perfect grass,
old ladies with cats for husbands and kids and blankets and love,
their cars armed with banshees
would our sport tap their mirror frames.
Our pool in the back was safe though,
with its groaning spring board and humming Arnold,
his tentacle legs swishing in the blue cold
patrolling the waters for leaves and fungi
that would somehow find the peace to settle
on the pale, cracked underbelly
amidst cannonballs and flips and dives into
our small ocean of tranquility--
our bodies cutting into the lapping currents, their spread
slapping tiles and flowing over like our laughs
that reverberated in that court where,
outside our homemade fence,
rotten fingers like old maple branches pried open
second story blinds to peer at the noise like an infestation
of gout in their retirement. It was our revenge for having to
pull the newspaper from our plastic yellow bat.
My brother and I tugged the San Ramon Valley Times out,
a newsprint eulogy to the tennis ball
that would never fly as far again.