You Couldn't Be A Tennis Teacher Your Whole Life
A Poem For My Friend Who Died 20 Years Ago Now
I thought of you in the heat of September.
Your number still stored in my phone.
My daughter picking up a tennis racket.
I almost texted How is it over there?
I almost texted What happened? As if you might answer - that you were married now and lived by the sea. That you had children and you built fires on the beach and dug up clams in silt of the bay, cooking them in a big pot over the flames, burying potatoes in the ashes.
Trawling a rake back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
That you would send me a picture. Your face still dark from the sun, your curls now black and gray. That you would write that you couldn’t be a tennis teacher your whole life. And that when I last dreamt of you you were standing on a ladder in my office fixing the skylight. Keeping your beautiful face hidden. No matter which way I turned.
A scar that did not heal.
this is the one
Incredibly beautiful from a writer and ex tennis pro. A small suggestion? I’d take out the very last line. Sorry the teacher and editor and me always comes out, but there is a saying in writing that the story or poem or whatever it is that you’re working on, that the ending is actually too or one sentence before the ending you really have.