Face it, he thinks, there’s more than
a jump shot and high caliber pass
but not much
It’s the basket at the buzzer he will remember
A few forced errors are all he gets
August mornings he wakes 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 hello from back yards
Birds broadcast the verdict
from yard to yard:
Fouled out! Fouled out!
He and a few friends raised the hoop
on a birthday bash, four of them or more,
enough room for two on two,
slurring their words and missing the rim
One season tumbled 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
He painted his house three times by hand
and stopped the leaks
The trees he planted took fifteen years
to look their age
His time with his children was lost
to traveling, traveling, traveling
Here in the fast break of autumn
he maneuvers from mid-court to the key
opposed by no one but myself,
backs off, switches hands,
pivots into the choreography
of hook shot, sky and rebound
He wonders if neighbors still watch him
from a bedroom window drive across
the centerline into middle age
to execute a textbook layup
Each quarter ends by his own clock
In this world of dribblers and shooters
the closest distance between two points
is over the top
One day when he has gone to buy the bread
creditors will come and post a final score
on the bat and board of his small unthrifty life
He will surrender none of his private strategies
but they can carry off high blood pressure,
bruises, tics, chewed cuticles, gastric distress
In the heat of their full court press
he will signal a calling of time, resolve
to stop competing, be himself again
Even the grubs gnawing the bluegrass will know
he’ll play again in another kind of season