the Knicks & the net
no one ever talks about nature's confetti
Pine needles are natural confetti. They’re just as aggravating to clean up, always loitering, discovered in corners months after a party, months after autumn has passed. They drift through the air, forgotten as they hit the ground unless they land on a venerable surface.
I used to kick at the pine needles on my grandfather’s tennis court. Clumping them was pointless; one mound was indistinguishable from the bohemian hem running around the slowly eroding concrete. The terra-cotta color was stark against the green tar, almost a perfect opposition. It distracted from the missing links in the chain-link fence.
Our rogue backhands would dwindle a tube of tennis balls instantaneously. We sent them sliding into the corners, buried in the piles of needles left there from the autumn before, frozen by the winter that followed, and thawed by that spring.
The net endures that same fall and freeze and bloom. The stakes on either end are rusted over yet somehow always pulled taut. Its center rests on the ground, a sag of exhaustion either from the elements or the intermittent and unreliable suckiness of our play.
That court is a graveyard of training wheels. Flat enough to let the old farm bike glide, to let the perpetually flat tires reluctantly roll. And those needles were padding between skin and surface, somehow softening the blows from novices swerving around the nicks and the net. That and the obnoxious motorcycle helmets strapped snug on our heads.
And lying there flat on our backs, heads lolling beneath the heft of the helmets, those pine trees bracketed the world. But they always seemed to lean over the fence, pulled toward the service line.
The needles only really lived there.
They were everywhere, actually, but they blended in everywhere else. On the sloping hill down from the court, where we would sled in the winter even when there wasn’t quite enough white on the ground to let the plastic slide. On the path between the woods and the tallest section of fence, where the 4-wheelers would tilt at a 45-degree angle as they passed. Where we all learned to lean against the force of gravity. Beneath the massive tires of the retired firetruck that has been in the process of being restored since before the net started to droop. On the roof of the well house that only really houses beers and lime Gatorades bought in 2008 and a deflated soccer ball or two.
Yet the tennis court is the home of the pine needles. They belong there as much as the worn white baselines. As much as the side gate that all the dogs learned to open with their noses. As much as the kids with kids of their own breathing in the mountain air. As much as the long-lost lime green balls and forgotten Nerf bullets. As much as the drawn and faded chalk-art masterpieces.
Each year, a new crack spreads through the surface, the newest vein for needles to catch and burrow into, never truly leaving. The crevices have never and will never be filled or fixed. Those needles will always have a place to stay, a landing spot below the trees. Stark against the ground, caught in the links of the chain-link, decorating corners and blurring the boundary lines.
As natural as confetti.
