Tennis ball

The new route escorts the old to the corner
of a former tennis court. Hard, defiant,
scuffed up countless times, here is a remnant
of a world once known to us: childhood learners,

volleying, chasing, stumbling. Now and then, a
piece of the carefree past returns. The present,
bolder and brighter, defers at these moments,
making of each of us a kind of mourner.

And so it goes: our path and its faded shadow,
in parallel, can never intertwine,
but come as close as this. Time will allow
its relics brief life in the travelling brain.

A tennis ball skims the non-existent net
and comes to rest here, at our weary feet.