Tennis

"I like how we have to pretend like we're playing," I said, though we were playing, my older brother and me, But now he was headed over To the darkened shed near the basketball courts To smoke pot, in secrecy, far from evil spirits. It pays to be paranoid when you smoke as much pot as my brother, He told me in flashes of self-consciousness, as a nervous squirrel might. But under the moon in the ghostly, vacant jungle of the Manawili Valley It was all peace and frosted harmony, billowing down From a mythical, mountain landscape that felt to breathe with such Visceral passion it made you grateful you didn't live on another planet Where there was only pictures and paintings of mountains. But this was our world, our sweat-soaked, permeating wonder-sphere, And we were the only two awake in a soundless, nocturnal sleep. And we had some tennis balls and some rackets. So we played and smoked and thought squirrelly thoughts And when the people came we gave them our balls For they had none, And they thanked us when they were done For we were still playing. We had a house we lived in. But there was nothing there for us, No quiet dream to give life to. Here with our rackets we had myth, the natural world, And the active ingredient of muscles and tendons happy at work. Happy and grateful for the progress of freedom. We played and we pretended to play. As we live and pretend to live. As we love and pretend to love.