NO MATCH
Father, you must admit
your parents were fabulous
tennis players—
especially your mother
with that flaming backhand slash!
But, sadly, they had no ball.
Then, you were born …
Years later, they served you to me,
but my racquet had no strings.
Father, you passed right through me.
—from Rattle #23, Summer 2005
Tribute to Lawyer Poets
__________
Lawrence Russ: “My urge toward poetry probably began in the darkness and cold of my early childhood, with a wish to make my unseen, uncared-for self visible and compelling to others. Finding a way to do that led from the fairy tales I heard and read as a tot, to the Dr. Seuss books that my third-grade teacher recited with such gusto, to the poems of Eliot, Frost and Thomas that excited and intrigued me as a thirteen-year-old. But poetry, in the end, isn’t self-expression or self-enhancement. It’s a fidelity and grace in using words as best we can to help bring people life, and life more abundantly.”
