Imagine a basketball court set
high up the flanks
of a deserted island,
surrounded by blue-cold seas.
Make it an outdoor court,
sheets of one-inch plywood
laid over oak beams set on rock,
two hoops & netting strung behind.
Now put yourself there
the first good week of April,
sunny and sixty degrees,
too early for flies.
You shoot baskets
with an old friend,
shooting with nothing to prove.
He hits three twenty-footers in a row
as you rebound and cheer. Then you
shoot your own set of net swishers
before you both pause to look up
from the court,
across the tops of graceful cedars,
across the deep blue of ocean below.
You shoot and dance the dribble,
fake, and shoot the day away.
Last I knew
he is a hydrologist in Arizona
knowing steady work
& where to find it.
I have not been to Canada
in a dozen years,
but I know where to find it;
in the thump-patter
of a friendly game,
no one keeping score.
Friends and acquaintances , beware! You may end up in a poem.
Rockvale Writer’s Group published this one