This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today’s poem is "Fast Break" by Edward Hirsch a fine poet of national renown and graduate of Grinnell College. In it he uses the description of a basketball game to write an elegy.

Fast Break

A hook shot kisses the rim and
hangs there, helplessly, but doesn’t drop,

and for once our gangly starting center
boxes out his man and times his jump

perfectly, gathering the orange leather
from the air like a cherished possession

and spinning around to throw a strike
to the outlet who is already shoveling

an underhand pass toward the other guard
scissoring past a flat-footed defender

who looks stunned and nailed to the floor
in the wrong direction, trying to catch sight

of a high, gliding dribble and a man
letting the play develop in front of him

in slow motion, almost exactly
like a coach’s drawing on the blackboard,

both forwards racing down the court
the way that forwards should, fanning out

and filling the lanes in tandem, moving
together as brothers passing the ball

between them without a dribble, without
a single bounce hitting the hardwood

until the guard finally lunges out
and commits to the wrong man

while the power-forward explodes past them
in a fury, taking the ball into the air

by himself now and laying it gently
against the glass for a lay-up,

but losing his balance in the process,
inexplicably falling, hitting the floor

with a wild, headlong motion
for the game he loved like a country

and swiveling back to see an orange blur
floating perfectly through the net.

"Fast Break" by Edward Hirsch from Wild Gratitude published by Alfred A. Knopf originally published in The Atlantic.

For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.

Edward Hirsch was born in Chicago in 1950 and educated at Grinnell College and the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of five books of poems: On Love (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); Earthly Measures (1994); The Night Parade (1989); Wild Gratitude (1986), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award; and For the Sleepwalkers (1981), which received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations, an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. He teaches at the University of Houston.