Croquet Ball

It has rolled to a stop along one wall

of the dim garage, rolled in through the wicket

of the overhead door, the last sharp clack

of a mallet so far behind it now that only

the imagination can hear it, clacking in over

the clipped, imagined grass. Its pale green stripe—

the green of the handles on old kitchen spoons—

is even paler now, under a whisper of dust,

and the wood has cracked along the grain

so that the cracks go round and round it

like rings on a planet. And perhaps it is

a planet, and not even one of the lesser ones

but something worth our full attention,

and I, while passing through this life,

wheeling my lawnmower into the shadows,

have been the first to see it waiting there.