Learning to Dunk

I guaranteed my friend I’d do it within a year.
I must have been feeling my oats, as my parents said,

or flirting with the deadly sin of pride, as my teachers warned.
But wasn’t that the point? To defy my natural boundaries,

to crack the secret domain of God,
the hallowed air of the ten-foot-high rim?

A boy is nothing unless he is functional,
a man in training who can run and lift and jump.

For years, as if on instinct, I had been grazing ceiling tiles
with my fingertips, slapping door lintels with my palms.

I began to lose interest in basketball the first time I fell in love.
Funny, this falling I embraced, the inverse of pride, the ground taken out from under me.

But even this felt like flying, the only dream I can remember,
the one where I propel myself over treetops simply by kicking my feet.

Today, I resisted the urge to jump and touch an exit sign.
I recalled the boy I lost, still learning to dunk, still hoping to fall.

CHRIS ABBATE’s poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Cider Press Review, and Comstock Review, among others. He is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award nominee and has received awards in the Nazim Hikmet and the North Carolina Poetry Society’s poetry contests. Abbate’s first book of poetry, Talk About God, was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company. His second book, Words for Flying, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.