Hoops, High Jumps, Movement Of Muscles: A Crowdsourced Poem Inspired By Sports

Casey Noenickx

November 28, 2019 / 2:09 am

NPR asked for your sports-inspired poetry and you replied with an overwhelming "game on!" We collected more than 500 responses about games, players and perseverance.

The submissions found poetry in tennis, baseball, ballet, track, cross country, football, basketball and hockey, as well as themes of winning and losing, technique and talent, movement and melody.

Poet Kwame Alexander took all the responses and created a Morning Edition community poem that covers, he says, a " 'poetpourri' of a wild world of sports."

Hoops, High Jumps, Movement Of Muscles: A Crowdsourced Sports Poem

The trail has been treacherous, rocky and twisting—I'm tempted to quit, my poor legs resistingbut up this steep hill I continue to rally,envisioning flowers that bloom in the valley...

I'm a hurricane forcewith a Blue Jacket sting.

I flash to the finishlike my feet have wings.

You think you got skillwith your high jump technique?

I spring through the airwhile you're trippin' on your feet.

I hurdle through the worldwhile you stub your toes.

I'm the queen of the fast lane—everybody knows.

So bring your best,your talent, your speed.

The ladies from Danielsdon't follow—we lead.

The girl's got hoops and she's 5'9"a skinny brown beanpoleI'm so proud she's mineI had pushed for ballet slippersShe quietly agreedGraceful but loveless, she did it for meNow out on that court with the ball in her handmore graceful than everThe dance finally began

Crisp movements catching the eyes of everyone in the room,Gliding across the floor as if on water,Jumping with the beat of the melody

There's something about the arc the ball makesAs it traces the path between us.Catch and throw, catch and throw.The warmth of the early spring sun,The slap of the ball into leather,The movement of muscles, automatic, familiar.We ease into it, loosening our armsWith throws casual and slow.

We have played this game with Nerf balls,Babies sleeping in the other room,With tennis balls in swimming poolsShowing off our acrobatic, diving catches — A 10 from the American judge!On grassy fields with bases,Giggling kids racing between, caught in a pickle.

Through 40 years of friendship and 30 of marriage, This has been a constant:

Shall I compare thee to a stand-up double?Thou art more welcome and more absolute.

"Hey Honey — got your glove?"

Now, we take it more seriouslythan when we were any good—before the joint surgeries,when we could still hit without pain,when we had legs. Now, we play not to lose—...but todayeveryone that shows upwins—this sun, this sky, these companionable partners, these comprehensible lines.

When you have ice blocks for feet, icicle fingersand a lump in your throat to tremble your bodywith cold tomorrow, you doubt the sanity

of waking at five, the 8-year-old on iceby six, blades carving shapes you can't name. And when your boy looks through his coach's face

on the bench, red cheeks, a fire in each woodedeye, complains about tripping, that number sixteen with the black mask, says I'll chop

him down next time, you doubt this game. At the hour you venture into the warm room to thaw out your spine and hear a father

break down his son's backhand highlight spinner in a voice loud enough for all to hearyou know the annual backyard ice sheet

was a bad idea.

This is not what forgiveness is supposed to look like—fast-food tacos and football.

The game should be a reason to talkbut as players flatten each other we watch with flat faces.

Football steals Sundays."Hon, weekends are for family,help with these damn kids!"

Stop. Imagine the universe, green-sunned planet or whatever, where this is poetry.

Where Monday morning papers put a poet—mouth open, arm rising— on the front page, and, in its own section, there are statistical landscapes ranking metaphors and similes, Top Ten rundown of the season's best opening and closing lines, investigative articles on the billions of hours of lost office productivity due to online Fantasy Poet leagues.

there's a big burly man in a headset somewhere weeping and waving his hands about Kwame Alexander before four sportscasters in matching tweed blazers slap each other on the back and stage an analytical replay of an Emily Dickinson stanza with unseen markers drawing arrows and lines across the screen:

The sky was clear, the snow was deepI prayed the lord my soul to keep,Then launched myself down mountain steepIn search of alpine glory.