No tennis rackets or courts nearby we
invented our own game with two straw brooms,
a worn yellow tennis ball found in the park
and the edges of a broken sidewalk
along the street to mark the lines
Sweep the ball past the other broom
and the score was one to nothing
Mid morning mom appeared
after hanging the wash to sit
on the porch swing sipping slowly
on a mug of black coffee and humming
a tune she said she sang
as a little girl on her family’s farm
Day after day we fought over the rules,
who cheated, if the ball stayed in bounds,
the game growing like ourselves
as complicated as the constant storms
of that shortened summer
At night defeated by mosquitoes,
tossing in the wet heat without
fans or cooling breezes,
we ached for morning so we could
finish our chores early to play
as many rounds as we could
In winter the snows locked us inside
looking out windows at bigger games
where the rules changed day by day
and the final scores were lethal