Plows blade the blizzard to the corners
of the parking lot, high piles under netless rims
so tempting that when we arrive for the dance
we don’t go inside; we find a semi-deflated
basketball in the trunk of the Caprice,
scale the snowbanks and dunk from the icy crust
as we could never dunk from asphalt or hardwood:
windmills, whirlybirds, one-handed slams,
sweating in stocking caps and down jackets,
brittle breath dusting the full-moon darkness
while across the black expanse a different game
in the gym, or so I imagine: classmates entwined
beneath perfectly calibrated ten-foot hoops,
palms flat on each other’s backs, chest-to-chest,
hip-to-hip, swaying shadows a half-step behind
the beat of a power ballad, closeness I long for but fear,
preferring the safer warmth of playing in the cold.
