by Bernard Keller

This tells a story of teacher friends and colleagues at the former A. E. Stevenson H.S. in the Bronx…..but it say so much more!

Some we won

some we lost

and some we just played,

but every game mattered

and everything counted.

 

Over a thousand times

we took to some gym floor.

We played ourselves

or students

or folks we hardly even knew.

 

Bank shots

line drives

high arching shots

that just fell over the lip of the rim,

hook shots

or scoops

inside out

dump it down low-

we didn’t have any plays,

we just wandered to our spots on the floor

and moved the ball around

until we got something we wanted.

 

Every game

every week was different,

had a different hero

or play we’d be talking about

years later

over beers

or at reunions.

 

 

I never thought there’d be a time

we would not play,

that we wouldn’t run some floor, somewhere

or challenge somebody to beat us,

never really thought about how it was gonna feel

lookin’ back on us playin’

instead of lookin’ forward to playin’ the next game.

 

Never ever really thought about

what I would miss

( or how much I would miss it),

but I can’t help thinkin’ about it, now.

 

B. Keller

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