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Thursday
Commercialized though March Madness has become, it’s useful to recall that almost none of the college players we will be watching over the upcoming days and weeks will enter the professional ranks. Think of them rather as kids who fell in love with the game and who play it with youthful enthusiasm. It is that side of the game that is captured by the Yusef Komunyakaa poem that I share with you today.
If you want to rediscover the true spirit of basketball, the poet tells us, check out America’s backyards and playgrounds. While trouble may lie around many of these kids, slapping them like a blackjack slaps an open palm, the game reveals “moves we didn’t know we had.”
I am particularly moved by Komunyakaa’s reference to a boy who, when his mother died, “played nonstop all day, so hard/ Our backboard splintered.” When my 21-year-old son Justin died, his younger brother Toby played continuous basketball in our driveway. I will always be grateful for the way that the mothers of Toby’s three best friends pulled their sons out of school that week so that they could play with him. For a 16-year-old, it was a powerful way of dealing with grief.
Slam, Dunk, & Hook
By Yusef Komunyakaa
Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury’s
Insignia on our sneakers,
We outmaneuvered to footwork
Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings like silk
Ten feet out. In the roundhouse
Labyrinth our bodies
Created, we could almost
Last forever, poised in midair
Like storybook sea monsters.
A high note hung there
A long second. Off
The rim. We’d corkscrew
Up & dunk balls that exploded
The skullcap of hope & good
Intention. Lanky, all hands
& feet…sprung rhythm.
We were metaphysical when girls
Cheered on the sidelines.
Tangled up in a falling,
Muscles were a bright motor
Double-flashing to the metal hoop
Nailed to our oak.
When Sonny Boy’s mama died
He played nonstop all day, so hard
Our backboard splintered.
Glistening with sweat,
We rolled the ball off
Our fingertips. Trouble
Was there slapping a blackjack
Against an open palm.
Dribble, drive to the inside,
& glide like a sparrow hawk.
Lay ups. Fast breaks.
We had moves we didn’t know
We had. Our bodies spun
On swivels of bone & faith,
Through a lyric slipknot
Of joy, & we knew we were
Beautiful & dangerous.
From Yusef Komunyakaa, Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2001)
