Old Basketball Hoop
This abandoned post
on the edge of the driveway,
holding up the backboard and the rim
for more than twenty years now
in the same rusted pose,
like a monument to my children’s
childhoods, which I pass beneath
every day on my way to work,
this memorial to H-O-R-S-E,
and Around the World,
and nothing-but-net,
a metal net that went KA-CHING,
a sound so rich and gratifying,
whenever we scored a basket,
and it still tinkles softly
when the wind blows through it,
though no one has taken a shot
in years. The whole contraption
with its frozen posture
reminds me a little of myself–
still holding out, still holding up
the circle of an empty embrace
for those same children
who are done being children,
who have moved away and won’t
be moving back. It’s a little sad
and a little ridiculous, frankly,
that a whole sandbox of sand
that once upon a time I poured
into that hollow base–
so the whole thing wouldn’t tip over–
is still sitting quietly inside
just waiting for those children
to come out and play.
Delve
I want to go deeper,
all the way down
to the cellar of the house
I grew up in. I go there
in my head, the same head
that easily cleared the low ceiling
above the dark, narrow staircase,
the lightswitch on the left,
the banister beginning halfway down
on the right, the aluminum nosing
of the treads groaning metallically
as I take the steps one at a time,
counting them as I go: one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight–I think there were
ten altogether, though I could be overshooting it
or undershooting it. I can’t
remember exactly but I can imagine
(imagination is memory) the exact feel
of the newel-–small, rounded, wooden—
and the squeak-rub sound it makes
as I grasp it briefly like the hand
of a dance partner and twirl myself around it,
jumping off the last step with a flourish
and landing on the linoleum tiles
of the floor of the basement
of my childhood, the furnace room
(fire-breathing, verboten) to the left,
the laundry room (sweet-smelling, white)
to the right, and one central cylindrical
vertical pole silently supporting everything
above. I put my arms around it
lovingly. I clamp my legs around it
tightly. And I embrace it like a fire pole,
replacing my tight grip with a looser grip
to allow myself to descend.
Revision
There used to be
a live chicken in this poem.
There was a mountain
and a sailboat.
The Pacific Ocean
sloshing between stanzas.
And me like Adam
saying Here am I
to God who was also
near.
