Memorial Hoops by Reginald Dwayne Betts

 Memorial Hoops

 

The day broke a record for cold, for us wanting

To be anywhere but outside, & it was late

May, the weekend we called Memorial. My mother

Is a veteran, but that is a story for another time,

& we were driving into the mother of rivers state,

My youngest son, named after two men, one who

Turned a trumpet into a prayer, the other who

Before a piano became whatever those who know say

G-d sounds like, me, & friends, who like me, imagined

Watching their sons trade baskets with strangers

Was some kind of holy. Around us was more granite

Than Black folks & I carried Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man

In my knapsack, hesitant to return to all the astonishing

Ways we make each other suffer &, still, somehow,

Survive, & astonished most by how we remember. I’ve

Forgotten my fair share of things that matter. But

Who am I kidding? The weekend was about

Basketball. We’d driven three hours to this colder

Weather. My youngest boy hoped he’d heat up once

A ball touched his hands. Did I say we named the child

After the idiosyncrasies of Jazz, all because as children

I don’t think my wife & I knew enough ambition

To save us from what we’d encounter. These were the days

 

When he and the nine he suited up with desired

Little more than to hear the rasp of a ball against whatever

Passed for wood in a gym with a hoop. There is something

To be said about how basketball makes men of boys and boys

Of men. The ref who chattered with us parents wondered

Why a cousin the age of the ballers ate chips for breakfast.

The other team had a player who made me think, though

She be but little she is fierce, as she, the only girl on

The court slipped a jewel into that hovering crown

We cheered, even those of us whose boys sought to dribble

& jump shot their way to the glory of a win. & when Miles

Came down as if he knew what would happen. I didn’t hold

My breath. A crossover, the ball then swung around his back,

The kid before him lost on some raft in a wild river. Maybe

He knew the ball would fall true because he turned around

To watch us as much as to get back on defense. We laughed

& laughed & watched as kids barely large enough to launch

All of that need at a target did so, again & again.