Body - David Handsher

[Larry Robinson]

Body

By the time I met him
he was a stumbler and shuffler

He ran in tiny steps 
slower than a walk

He’d had a heart attack
and a stroke

But there he was 
every Monday night

game basketball in hand
practicing a three point

shot over and over again
by bringing the ball around

his head, contorting his body
and sling shooting the ball

toward the basket, hoping, like
all of us, for a miracle.

They called him “Body.”
I think that was a joke.

He’d become the cantankerous
old man that used to threaten

my friends and me, as kids, when our ball
would bounce into his yard

Don’t you know how to play
defense, Body would yell 

if his opponent touched his arm
as he dribbled and stepped ever so slowly

One Monday night, a few weeks back,
he made three-pointer after three-pointer

Each time he would clench his fist
and let out an involuntary “yeah” in celebration

It was, as if, a lifetime of struggle, of stroke
of heart attack and heart break for us all

was bound up in that tight leather ball 
and we were cured and restored by its magic

He returned to his typical game 
in the weeks that followed

The ball had as much chance 
of banging against the door to the gym

as miraculously swishing the nets 
until one week word came that he had

suffered a severe stroke and then weeks 
later that he died from the stroke.

Information came out about Body
that I didn’t know.  He had been a science

teacher.  He had a wife and children.  He
had helped start the weekly basketball games

48 years ago.  He was gentle and kind.
One thing I am sure that I knew about Body:

When he took his old and unresponsive 
body and twisted it awkwardly behind 

the basketball and catapulted the ball
toward the basket he felt as we all do

that for just one moment, in just one place,
the future could be perfect.

	- David Handsher