Before they leveled the playing field
one side was always running uphill,
which was hard. And the other side
was always running downhill, which was
hard too--hard to stop the ball from rolling,
hard to stop yourself from running
when you're running down a hill after a ball.
Downhill had certain advantages though.
It was true. But uphill had advantages too--
you could belay; you could stick a strategic
foot out, trip a careening downhill guy
mid-stride. And anyway, we usually
switched at halftime. So when the referees
came up with the idea, we scratched our heads
and tried to envision a playing field that was
level. "You mean get rid of the hill?" we asked
incredulously. They nodded vehemently
and their excellent silver whistles hanging
on lanyards round their necks bobbed in sympathy.
The bulldozers and the backhoes arrived
the next day, the tines of their buckets biting
into our hill, eating it away before our eyes,
and before we could say time out, or foul play,
or off sides--which some of us did say, although
by then it was too late--they'd gone and changed
the game forever. Some of us quit outright, preferring
to sit in judgment up in the stands--the closest
thing to a hill that they had. And some of us kept on playing,
adapting ourselves to the changing landscape,
learning the new steps, and the new names, making
new friends, many of whom were so young that
they'd never played on a hill. They could only
imagine, they said. They could only shake their heads
and regard us in a squinting sort of way, as though
the sun were going down behind a hill, behind us.