The speaker describes a failed attempt to catch a ball. They ran long, a football or baseball image, and still came up empty. The first stanza plays it lightly: since nothing was caught, there's nothing to throw back. It sounds almost like a shrug, a joke at their own expense.
The second stanza turns the joke around. The speaker says that carrying "it" around was a strain, though there was never any ball to carry. The "it" becomes the missed chance itself, and the aching arms show how heavy disappointment can feel even when nothing was gained or lost in a physical sense. The final phrase, "all that lack," makes absence feel like a burden.
The mood is wry and rueful. The short, clipped lines feel offhand, but underneath there's a quiet sadness. The poem suggests that near misses, whether in sport or in life, can linger longer than clear failures, because we keep reliving what almost happened.