The Teams That Always Wear Black

Nothing but basketball comes in  March.
Everyone dreams of cutting down nets.
Who will reach deep to find strength
in muscles that ache but must not quit?

Look how chosen teams play
keep-away with beautiful slippers—
no longer afraid of the Spirit,
no longer afraid to think, holy.

Strong teams wear white, bend weary limbs
like forsythia branches, yellow and hardy.
Other teams wear black—
always black, under the bright lights.

There are no godmothers.
No pumpkins or coaches.  Not even mice.
Everyone knows the clock will strike midnight.
And they don’t really dance at this ball.

 

first published in Writer’s Harbor

More on the Late, Great Kitchen Saga

A few months ago, I declared the kitchen project finished, because I thought it was. Well, I was wrong. A few weeks ago our dishwasher began not cleaning dishes. So we followed the procedure: Running vinegar and sour salt through it to clean the sprayer. And it got better but still left ugly rings on glasses.

And then one day about three weeks ago, the dishwasher would not start, so we began to rely on a dishwasher named Helen, who had not lost her dish-washing skills but prefers blogging to dish-washing.

On Monday we bought a new dishwasher. And yesterday we – well, mostly Bill – installed it! Yea dishwasher! Yea Blogging!