Twenty two years ago I bounced a basketball –
worn dimple-less, faded black seams like rivers,
an over-inflated world – I used it to kill a
spider, flatten him with a ping crisp as a
sniper shot. I scrapped at him after, with
my ragged left thumbnail, unable to get
all the asterisk of him free of the concrete.
Twenty two hours ago, just outside Telluride,
a rock the size of my bedroom sighed after how
many millennia – crushed the car flat as
a stomped bellows and rebounded me right off
the cliff rim. Two hundred feet below, amid the
red chips of glass and bone, I wonder when
I’ll be peeled from the dolomite and steel
by his long scratchy legs. I wonder if
he’ll get more than I did.
Samuel Minier 