We all are.  Well, except perhaps
for those extraordinary chaps
whose hearts implode at ninety-one
beholding their first hole-in-one.
 
As for the rest of us, we die
in rehab or in surgery:
our bodies broken, our mind bent
on misconstruing what they meant.
 
“The best thing is to play and win,”
said Bobby Riggs to Billie Jean.
His 55-year-old Good News?
“The next best thing’s to play and lose.”
 
Track or diamond, field or court,
our time there is, alas, too short.
Raise?  We can’t even don the cup.
And then, at last, we just give up.
 
But dying once opens the eyes
to earth’s impending, dark surprise:
that Lord of Flies, that Final Buzzer
after which there is no other.

From Catma (Measure Press, January 2014). 
This poem first appeared in Sewanee Theological Review. 
Used here with the author’s permission.