Show Me the Place, 13

“Show me the place.”

Duke Senior in As You Like It (2.1)

14: Hiram College Tennis Courts; Hiram, Ohio 1956–66

I’d never played the game before—

A game with “love” there in the score?

But soon I played it all the time—

Just hacked away—a pantomime

Of how the game, well, should be played.

But I was not all that dismayed:

I ran around; I hit the ball—

And, now and then, I took a fall.

In college, I was on the team—

It was a kind of splintered dream:

I earned four letters in four years—

But wasn’t good—just ask my peers.

I played some more, much later on.

But soon my tennis days were gone:

I’d gotten older—truth to tell—

And could no longer play too well.

My knees and ankles, shoulder, too,

Said, “That is it—you’re done—you’re through!”

And so my racket went away—

The final curtain for that play.

Hiram College tennis team
1966
(I'm 4th from the left, front row)