Dad’s Hook Shot
It was magic before Magic Johnson’s,
old school too, like black-and-white
TV footage, as in Bob Pettit’s
fifty against the Celtics in ‘58.
It seemed to emanate from his back pocket,
his left arm extended like a minute hand
behind him, like something from his past,
the ball balanced in his palm,
my father springing from one leg
while slightly bending the other –
more grace than grit,
more ballerino than power forward.
It was game point, the final dagger
in our wager of loser does the dishes.
He in his polyester slacks and work shirt,
a cool dusk settling upon our backyard
and upon my futile attempt
to graze his hook shot with my fingertips,
helplessly following the arc of it
over my head and toward the hoop,
the ball kissing the backboard,
the net rippling its silky response.
He seemed to be at his best then,
bright-eyed and athletic,
his chest full of air. And me,
at sixteen, just coming into my own,
as he would say, as if he were handing
over the reins of myself to me
at this intersection of my awkwardness
and his finesse.
Did we know that every game was one closer
to a time when we would no longer play?
Perhaps the rim in all its cylindrical perfection
knew this, its orange eyelid gazing down
at our bodies pulsing around the patio.
Or my mother in all her unspoken wisdom,
as she peeked through
the window at us from between a slit
in the kitchen curtains, dirty dishes stewing
in sink water, waiting to be cleaned.
***
Fish Hippie
He has been here forever,
oblivious of the time
or the day
a conductor of waves,
of crests and troughs
three poles in the sand,
rod tips bowing to the sea.
He checks them in turn
reeling, rebaiting, recasting
each a hook and twine of petition,
all hope
for a single tug,
a flicker of a reply.
They have yielded nothing.
Not that it matters
because fishing is a forgetting
of his land-body,
one as predictable
as duty
and a homecoming too
a reunion with his watery self,
his buoyant self
which had been waiting all winter
for his return
smiling, tanned,
anointed
with salt spray.
***
Fourth-Grade Basketball Game
If hope were a basketball,
as round and as light,
an orange orb ascending
toward the gym rafters
above the horizon of a rim,
the open mouth of it,
a ten-foot-tall arbiter.
If our sideline shouts
were really a prayer,
an intercession
for a game
that confines them
between baselines,
free throw lines,
and the invisible line
the referee draws with his finger,
which they are to stand behind,
not over,
not on.
If the symmetry
of the court
could harness their fluidity,
the clashing atoms
of their bodies,
bruised elbows and knees.
If the game would only accommodate
their intentions
then their effort would be
its own reward,
equilibrium
within the perfect
unfairness of the game,
despite another attempt
the hoop rejects,
the ball caroming
from the rim,
floating back
into their outstretched
arms.
***
Skating Lessons
Our skating instructor has us extend
our arms for balance,
like toddlers taking our first steps,
as if the very ground
has been pulled from under us,
as if traction will betray us
on feet morphed into blades.
She tells us we will fall,
It’s not a question of if, but when, she says
and shows us how to do it by bending
her knees and dropping to one side
as if wounded.
One winter on a pond
my friend and I had just cleared of snow,
I skated over a bruised spot of ice,
heard a sharp crack
like shattered glass and fell through
up to my chest –
the same thin ice the nuns warned us
we were skating on
whenever we were disobedient in their classrooms
despite our attempts to be good,
to keep from falling,
to keep from falling through.
On winter vacations in New York
my mother would skate all day until dinner
in the snow-white skates my father had bought.
She likened Heaven to a skating rink,
an endless, clean sheet of ice
I imagined her gliding along
on one foot, then the other,
performing axels, spins and loops,
a silk scarf trailing her,
arms angled,
fingertips pointing skyward,
an eternal smile.
***
Accidental Medalist
It was a strange trick on my teenage mind –
denying what I was seeing,
but trying to imagine that someday it would happen,
my name in the paper claiming
I had shot the low score
in my high school golf tournament the day before.
There was another Chris on our team, Pellegrino,
the one who shot the low score, the medalist,
and whose name was supposed to be in the paper.
He gracefully shrugged it off as an innocent mistake,
said whoever called the paper must have reported the wrong Chris.
My father cut it from the paper and framed it
and gave it to me. He knew how badly
I wanted to be a medalist, how I needed
something to boost my frail sense of confidence.
Perhaps it would help me summon a strength
that was lying dormant. Or give me something
to shoot for. So, I hammered
a nail in the wall above my bed
and hung it and kept it there.
It wasn’t because my father believed
in a misprint, I reasoned,
but because he believed in me.
***
Chris Abbate’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Connecticut River Review, and Cider Press Review, among other journals. Chris is a two-time nominee for a Pushcart Prize and has been nominated for a Best of the Net award. His poetry has also been featured multiple times on Verse Daily and he’s published two collections of poetry, Talk About God (Main Street Rag 2017) and Words for Flying (FutureCycle Press, 2022). His website is www.chrisabbate.com.
