as Erving went higher
and now began
to extend his right hand in a precise arc
beginning precisely above his head,
painting a broad and precise circle
not unlike Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man
in his hula hoop
of perfect proportions
(if that little naked man wasn’t little
or naked and was palming a basketball
and was flying
through the trees)
and I find myself again and again with my arm
making the perfectly impossible circle
again and again
as I watch this clip on YouTube
frame by frame clumsily
on a computer with gummy keys
and a Post-it note
covering the eyehole scrawled
DISCIPLINE
on April 5, 2015,
at 1:48 a.m., again
and again, thinking
what am I looking at,
what am I seeing,
back to the first long step toward the baseline,
the slight contact with Landsberger,
the leap, again,
long step, contact,
leap, again, long step,
contact, leap,
again, long step, contact, leap,
and I notice this time
in the background,
which is, granted, hazy,
this being old footage and my eyes a bit rheumy
for the now nearly two hours studying this clip,
I notice, at about the foul line, Silk,
aka Jamaal Wilkes,
who, for the record, Coach Wooden,
on the record, said was his best player ever at UCLA,
not Kareem and
oh fuck forever Bill Walton,
and it’s worthwhile to spend at least a moment
with the name Silk,
among the finest basketball nicknames,
implying an ease and fluidity of movement,
implying a difficult thing,
a painful thing,
made to look easy,
a fiber prized for its softness,
its smoothness on the skin,
gathered from captive worms
fed mulberry leaves,
my court name was Beast
for what it’s worth,
and after a summer league game
on the court at 10th and Lombard
where those in the know
would slide through a gap
in the grimace of the wrought iron gate
to get in, a court that would be in time
shut down in the most heinous
of ways—removing the rims—
the backboards lonely as gravestones—
because of complaints to the city
from the condo owners
across the street
who did not want to hear god forbid
all that Negro gathering
and celebration and care and delight
every goddamn weekend morning
all that
frolic and tumult,
all that flight,
(why can’t they just go
someplace else?)
a slightly older opponent
told me, holding
my hand and shoulder
and pulling me close
—he was holding me—
beneath the stately oaks
overhanging the court,
looking kindly down on us
and time to time
blocking a high arcing shot
and wishing a leaf or two upon
the ex-ballers on the sidelines
reading the Philadelphia Inquirer,
sipping coffee, debating and laughing
or acting stupid like refs making calls
oh yeah he walked his ass off,
the oaks dappling the oldheads and their discourse
(the best line of verse I will ever write),
his shirt soaked through,
staring at me to be sure
I was listening, which I was, then as now,
you aint no beast, you aint
no beast, you’re a man,
you hear me,
I notice Silk’s right leg and hip twitch
before relaxing with what might have been the body’s aw shit
though if you look closely,
again and again,
in a certain kind of way,
again and again,
you’ll see also what might be a kind of light
descending upon Silk’s high cheekbones
and forehead, again and again,
unfurling almost across his face
as he cranes his neck toward the soaring
until you’d almost swear, tonight,
at 2:26 a.m., he was looking into
a tree strewn with people,
the human-shaped shadows twisting
across his body, the legs swaying into his torso,
a gray hand birding across his face,
resting for a second at his ear,
the pinky become a beak from which
wheezed a tiny song, you’d swear,
watching this sliver of the clip
again and again,
the shadow of one man’s head seeming to lay itself
on Silk’s chest, for which, in the clip,
you’ll see Silk make of his arm
a cradle, lowering his head
as though to say I’m sorry,
I’m so sorry,
with which the tree makes a kind of choir,
moaning, I’m so sorry,
twisting its roots in the molder
with what they’ve been made to do
__________________________________
“Be Holding” from the book Be Holding, by Ross Gay, © 2020. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
