Poet in the Post: Ode to Greg Oden

Greg, I hear your knees creak.
I hear that when you run up
and down the court
your hips and knees and wrist
creak like an old tree trunk

and that you've grown so stiff
you have to watch the world pass by
from an all-seeing folding chair;
men much older than you sprinting by,
like ravens, making you look
like some lost wanderer
who comes trolling the local gymnasiums
and playgrounds for spoiled youth.

I hear the children recognize you
by the limp of your five o'clock shadow.

Greg, I hear your knees creaked until they cracked,
and I wonder why you traded your eye
for wisdom and not new joints.

Why didn't you saw the legs
off your eight-legged steed
and strap them onto yourself
like a pair of Forrest Gump braces?
Isn't that what gods do--
make the crippled walk, dance, and leap?

How come you couldn't heal yourself?

Greg, how come your name
couldn't heal your body
and keep your sons from being so weak
that mistletoe could slay them?

I never understood a mythology
that teetered on top of a gimp tree
and the promise that the apocalypse
would come through the jaws
of a snake; I never understood
waiting on the end of the world
like one would wait for a mail man--

I never understood how jenga
translated into a religion.

Greg, I wish the world hadn't toppled you,
and that when we sifted through your ruins,
like piles of junk mail,
an ode to the new world had sprung forth--
full of exaltation--
rather than the exhausted lament:

we are the giants we were born to disfigure.