The Millennial Pedestrian

This little look back into adolescence by Bill Matthews appears in a new book called The Making of a Sonnet, edited by Edward Hirsch and Eavon Boland (Norton). Even if you never saw an NBA game with a date in the late ’50s, if you’re male, you can identify. And if you’re not, you can at least empathize.

 

Cheap Seats, the Cincinnati Gardens, Professional Basketball, 1959

    By William Matthews 

The less we paid, the more we climbed. Tendrils

of smoke lazed just as high and hung there, blue,

particulate, the opposite of dew.

We saw the whole court from up there. Few girls

had come, few wives, numerous boys in molt

like me. Our heroes leapt and surged and looped

and two nights out of three, like us, they’d lose.

But "like us" is wrong: we had no result

three nights out of three: so we had heroes.

And "we" is wrong, for I knew none by name

among that hazy company unless

I brought her with me. This was loneliness

with noise, unlike the kind I had at home 

with no clock running down, and mirrors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008.
It's part of the Prose category.
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