Instead, a bocce game for six on a late summer afternoon (watch the sun) and an intense competition that’s forgotten once the matches are over.
Here’s Luke Johnson’s poem, about the minor sport that can accommodate all sorts of behavior and observations:
"The Heart, Like a Bocce Ball"
The jack sits low in the grass. We’re dead drunk, cannonballing across the lawn, gouging handful divots, each of us still nursing a tumbler of scotch brought home from the wake. We sons and brothers and cousins. I spin my ice and let that black-tie loosening buzz swarm. The others choose the sky, looping pop-flies that swirl with backspin, an earthen thud answering grunts while the soft dirt caves. I bowl instead, slow-ride hidden ridges—the swells buried beneath the grass—carving a curve, a line from start to stop, finish. The heart, like a bocce ball, is fist-sized and firm; ours clunk together, then divide.