Ramona Herdman

            There’s something about the boundary of a sport

            (the edge of snooker’s baize and the audience 

            in the dims beyond, the mere line that marks 

            the end of a netball court mid-playground) 

            that’s so bathetically hypothetical, so 

            sillily literal. So little.

            You have your umpire in his high chair, 

            with a picketty ladder, that makes him look 

            pyramid-topper-tiny as he ascends.

            Perspective makes your Grecian diver 

            shrink into a hoppy fly as he rises 

            effortfully to the highest board. 

            What’s the point of your immortal stats, 

            your gyre of rules? For your outside ones 

            there’s always rain to rain it off or 

            the sun in your eyes. It’s background noise:

            a briefly disturbing mobby roar 

            over the rooftops, interrupting life.

            But then again, sometimes it’s winter midnight 

            at 4pm and the stadium’s flooded full 

            of its own self-importance of light

            and it’s the one cube of the world left,

            looking in on itself like a ring-road supermarket 

            or a late-night garage in the desert

            or a UFO landed on a world stalled 

            in the era of bicellular worms. 

            And if you know you’re one of those worms, 

            what can you do but play? Crawl/hop/vault

            best as you can to worship at the altar

            of the line. What else is there?