In Garfield, Washington, the second of threespeed-trap towns cutting over intoIdaho on the way home from Spokane,there is a gray-going-white basketballfurred from use and exposure, deflatedonly enough to discourage prolonged play,in the grass by the public court, besidethe little park’s restroom, the simplest soonestoption en route. It pleases me againto spot it and, before returning to the car,to shoot two or three baskets. It must,with everything else, be buried under snowhalf of each winter. You lose the news,you shake the hour of seated transit offand stand quiet with whatever you’ve seen:a tractor waiting to pull the giant buckfrom the double yellow line, the pheasant vanishingin the bush, the long bright flowering wheator waves of grain in the anthem area windinspires. Bounce it two or three times and find,at the four finger pads of your right hand,a meridian bowed across the ball, the grace,remembered, by feel, of backspin. Unseenmark of experience, in a groove, at the line,clock stopped, to get it to roll back to you.This poem appears in the August 2026 print edition.