Face it, there’s more than
a jump shot and high caliber pass
but not much
It’s the basket at the buzzer you remember
A few forced errors are all you get
These late August mornings
I wake the neighbors
with the wham! wham! of a basketball
He who cursed their roaring lawnmowers
rises early now, sleepless again,
scanning the scoreboard
for judgment day in bankruptcy court
They pretend not to notice but
stop waving from back porches
Birds broadcast the verdict
from yard to yard:
Fouled out! Fouled out!
This house I painted three times by hand
and stopped the leaks
Our trees took fifteen years to look their age
We raised the hoop on a birthday bash,
four of us or more, enough for two on two,
slurring our words and missing the rim
But one season tumbles into another
McArty, local twenty-one champ,
doesn’t have time anymore,
running, running for school board
Ace Rivera, all-state guard,
would rather just drink
My son, I brushed off
with bad advice
My daughter, gone too,
I left on the sidelines
I got caught in the confusion
of traveling, traveling, traveling
I wonder if anyone still watches me
from a bedroom window
execute a perfect textbook lay up
and drive across the centerline
into middle age
Here in the fast break of autumn
I maneuver from mid-court to the key,
opposed by no one but myself:
Back off, switch hands,
pivot into the choreography
of hook shot, sky and rebound
Each quarter ends by my own clock
In this world of dribblers and shooters
the closest distance between two points
is over the top
One day when I have gone to buy the bread
they will come and post a final score
on the bat and board of my small unthrifty life
I will surrender none of my private strategies,
but they can carry off high blood pressure,
bruises, tics, chewed cuticles, gastric distress
In the heat of their full court press
I will signal a calling of time,
stop competing, be myself again
Even the grubs gnawing the bluegrass will know
I’ll play again in another kind of season