Making Games

We never knew of conkers,
the tame game that became the name
for the nuts in England.

But at the alley's end
we gathered them, calling them chestnuts.
With bushels in our shirts,

we divided into regimens
at kept distances, and lobbed them like grenades
at each other, high in arches

across the cul-de-sac.
At alley's end, grew the benefactor
and keeled the fenceless fence:

at junction of corners,
blurring of property lines,
grew the climbing tree,

and the source of our weaponry.