By Buzz
for Rich, September 23, 2009
Hoops
Pass the ball Kansas
bend it low
like wind
hoops wheat
twin soles thrash old grain
splash window see the floor
cold ash burns with pain
twist sap from maple core
pour-sugar-brown syrup down
cough up crack in tree
shinny-slick draw-and-kick
school those milk-fed feet
don’t bubbachuck that shot
jack-brick hoes shuck corn
shoot silk breeze smooth round knees
rim-blown dust bowl storm
plain people use the back-door
farmers sense the rain
screen spills from its spline
but still the spine remains
drive faded Chevy off the blocks
pick-and-roll crash paint
sweat cuts thick in thin socks
gnashed gears slash years change lanes
lace sneaks between hard lumber
post sets wing on high
stolen prayer banks on glass
no free throws paid in life
juke the movie cowboy
look inside for dimes
slip time’s string past tin ring
thread the needle through the pine
score your game in limestone
spin leather seam from rock
drop it soft as chalk Jayhawk
echoes dribble out our clock
Chevrolet, photo © 2009 by Linda Lupowitz. All
rights reserved.
Shoes Homework, drawing © 2009 by Max Lupowitz.
All rights reserved.
Buzz is a healer, husband, father, and friend, etching ethers in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley since 1979. He wrote this poem in the fall of 2009, as a birthday gift to his good friend and fellow basketball player Rich Jamison. Buzz had this to say about the poem: Rich asked me to write a poem for his birthday. The poem is about basketball, which we both share a love for. It’s about the pass, not the shot. While the shot carries the glory, the pass, or the assist (“dime”) gives the game its rhythm. So it’s also a metaphor for healing, where the practitioner assists, steps back in the shadows, and allows life to flow.
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