Miguel Nido pounds back
a flattened deuce-court serve.
His senior doubles partner
turns to the crowd and grins,
"That's why I like to play with him."

It's not just creation, the good doing;
it's also terrible,
the stunned unraveling of resistance.

Solid, without sequence--just bang!
--a dead tone, no musical strings, only
murderous concussion, gut without sense,

as when my ankle strained
not to rebound and break
against the stepped-on ball
behind my stretching forehand chase.

Something cracked, not bone,
just the taut balance--the sound
of thought broken, like Nido's
unforgiving forehand, fluid

as necessity, chancy as retreat
to the blind side amid stray balls,
gleeful as a long and breezy fall,
one sound, not continuing,

but hard in memory, fixed
like a debt to a dead man,
like love you can't deserve
and almost lose.