Autumn reveals the tree’s bared branches
a white football caught in its upward arms
and held fast, too high to reach,
as if the tree had spoiled a game
jealous of running and kicking feet.
And what if the players stood
their game interrupted by this silent referee,
capricious nature or just bad kicking,
fun arrested and puzzling begun
as they circled the rough trunk looking upward.
With no foothold offered, and no ladder near -
disappointment, anger, frustration, resignation.
The tree holding the ball less kicked
slowly deflated by weather and season,
without movement becoming a memory
of the human game played and wanton energy.
And of its history; being carried to the field in its roundness
dropped onto grass, a bouncy companion of their boots
its round energy lifting it high into the branches
and that roundness caught and held in a wooden embrace
high above the human mind in soundless chance.