The Tennis Players

A poem with a fleeting kind of love

The Tennis Players

By Walter Rice

We are the tennis players. We are the tennis watchers. We grip the racket and gravity holds down the ball. Sprinting and stopping, stepping and swinging, we court a small, bound volume of air that if not for its fuzzy little jacket could be almost anywhere.

The ball, like love, is valuable, but pointless if you hold it too long. There is a net that is neither up nor down and will not save you if you fall. In this game, love equals nothing, and certainly nothing equals love, but can you say whether equals love nothing?

Obviously, nothing in the game loves equals, for although the rackets are strung and the net is woven and the lines are joined, there cannot be a tie. Deuce is an advanced stage of love (equals nothing) since the players are equal but closer to the end, which is, of course, the game.

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