Pickup

It is all about speed and flexibility, about speed

and flexibility and teamwork and accuracy.  We move

like neurons charging in your head, man,

choreography from the ground up,

meanwhile smelling the hot asphalt and exhaust,

the chainlink fence around the playground spinning

past the corner of our eye, with the traffic and storefronts,

what the ball feels like in our hands, hard, pebbled, orange

and black, what the dribble feels like,

the sound and pound, the sort of lope we adopt

getting on and off the court, the way somebody looks

when he starts to play, his face and his sneakers, it’s all part of it.

When we swivel it is a whiplash, when we pass it is a cannonball,

when we leap, we hang in the air like Nijinsky taking a nap,

when the ball goes in we slap each others’ shoulders and butts

then turn like a flock of barn swallows, you know our ancestors

were farmers, they had barns, they watched the birds

flying around in formation at sunset,

or a school of fish, you know the way fish dart

in unison, the way the tempo changes and they just bat off,

you can’t begin to guess how they do it.  You could say

we slosh like waves in a bathtub, back and forth,

and when we dunk one it feels good, but

the way we play it, there are no pauses in this game.