All morning, the brothers work

their father. They break him—he leaves

his odd jobs undone and drives them to the tennis club.
White cloud banks avalanche. Wasps cloud the drink taps. Summer heat rubbers

the air treacly with the wattle

lancing the court fence, fingers gold
as the kangaroo on the little brother’s racquet throat.

The northerly swirls the ball—its ballpoint. Neither brother

can middle it. This proppy error
spray, heatstroke, herringbone soles scoring

parched en tout cas into gags

of pink dust. Their father, who’s removed his shirt, feeds them
drill sequences, opportunities—take it

early, take it on the rise, Agassi it, never let it come to you,

go out and meet it. Play your way in. But against the graffitiing 
wind, strokes prove reactive, countermeasures,

impotent and shocking and depthless, the way the little brother

that holiday tried to punch waves back to the mid-ocean.
They run out of balls. Their father gathers them in the basket,

squeezing the pressurised rubber through the metal slats.

Wattle in his pockets, the older brother 
watches the little brother run at speed

towards their father whose back is turned, racquet

aglow, as if the graphite has yet to harden,
as if the graphite that meets their father’s

spine, between the shoulder blades, were a molten

cast, beginning to set.