Denise Heinze: Easter, 1966 (Poetry)

After church
Our father scattered us to the borders of the three-sided field
A sister or two per team
To unnest the motley eggs.

I, the lone hunter, uncoupled
Scrambled to my linear wood
Peered into last year's growth, impaled by the Michigan winter,
And gathered my sacred clutch.

I made it back to our father first
The winner
It was enough, his chuckling admiration
This ex-warrior with the brash medals he kept silent.
Who called us flowers. 

He patted my head, pet my name, handed me the prize
I had not expected.
A Wilson. Ash blonde and tightly strung.

How did he know, I wondered then, I wonder now
How perfect it was.
A towering father bestowing
His tow-headed postulant
With a varnished scepter
Or so it seemed to a little girl.

I understood little then of the beclouded Calvary noons
That our father had witnessed in battle.
How afterwards he planted innocence
In the regenerate countryside;
His unfettered brood, antic ritual, the simple wooded racquet
His way, which would later become my way,
Of making it to the light of the third day.

Denise Heinze is Teaching Assistant Professor of English at North Carolina State University. She has a long list of publications, made possible in large part by periodically escaping to the tennis courts whenever in need of inspiration.