Clay

 

Clay

 

Musetti retires — injured, hurt,

picks himself out of red dirt.

 

We’re not talking Mars

or women from Venus,

you understand —

he simply isn’t the man Andy was.

 

Sympathetic sneer from Alcaraz

rocking a fist pump

as he brushes himself down —

maybe another also-ran;

think Dimitrov, think Tsitsipas,

then bring the trainer on.

 

He was bagelled, third set —

didn’t win a Grand Slam yet,

modelled from clay,

on which he played —

and must someday return.

 

Which, of course,

is where he fails:

too far behind the line,

or too close —

one drop shot too many — he’s toast.

Serve volleyed

unforced errors, netted balls,

argued with the umpire’s calls,

twisted ankle — falls.

 

We do not judge too harshly

nor condemn;

as fallen men,

we are not thickened —

after all, could you?

 

Do it, I mean?

Use a racket edge to hit clay,

smashing dirt from your shoe,

watch it scatter — pray —

for closed roof, rain stops play,

covers the courts

and cleans the temple’s table tops —

throws them over,

up one set, lost the breaker,

your chin’s got to drop.

 

No, of course not —

but we do our own thing:

some of us ball boys,

net stretchers,

purveyors of headbands,

sweaty go-getters.

 

Yet how strange it is —

this n-shaped parabola,

rising, falling — listen —

you can hear my line judge calling

to me: define vertex,

would you? Oh sure —

 

I saw Rafa, I saw Roger,

I saw your actual fab four

crossing Abbey Road for a laugh,

unaware they were on a graph

as vertices or nodes.

 

We miss them terribly,

without irony,

but they called it out

within my span,

played on the clay that makes us man.