Money Tree

A shine to the bark, silver leaves aflicker

and the wound that made the basketball hoop:

a bicycle’s metal wheel gouged in the tree,

the trunk’s burred lip that clamps it.

Whose childhood monument is this?

In the foreground of whose childhood home,

its blind-drawn windows? Where is the adolescent

of the grass and weeds, after school? The adolescent

of the fluid leap and jump shot? Of the glissando

stride and lay-up? The plosive woop woop cries sent up

when the body satisfies the calculating eye?

O the tree ashimmer in hypotheticals’ blooms—

where’s the undissuaded youth who sought

a scarce grace here? Who sought to make bank?

The shoulder and arm and wrist on repeat

even as day went thoroughly dark

who refused to come inside until they exhausted

the audience of their mind? O extraordinary dunk,

O hard slam, shudder the immovable tree.

Where is the glimmer of a sign

one might one day rise among the ordinals

to be ranked  first, first, first? Wouldn’t

it be possible? Because if not, if not, if not.