From<em> Idaho B Roll</em>

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.