In Garfield, Washington, the second of three speed-trap towns cutting over into Idaho on the way home from Spokane, there is a gray-going-white basketball furred from use and exposure, deflated only enough to discourage prolonged play, in the grass by the public court, beside the little park’s restroom, the simplest soonest option en route. It pleases me again to spot it and, before returning to the car, to shoot two or three baskets. It must, with everything else, be buried under snow half of each winter. You lose the news, you shake the hour of seated transit off and stand quiet with whatever you’ve seen: a tractor waiting to pull the giant buck from the double yellow line, the pheasant vanishing in the bush, the long bright flowering wheat or waves of grain in the anthem area wind inspires. Bounce it two or three times and find, at the four finger pads of your right hand, a meridian bowed across the ball, the grace, remembered, by feel, of backspin. Unseen mark of experience, in a groove, at the line, clock stopped, to get it to roll back to you.
This poem appears in the August 2026 print edition.
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