In Memory of the Utah Stars

By William Matthews 1942–1997 William Matthews

Each of them must have terrified

his parents by being so big, obsessive

and exact so young, already gone

and leaving, like a big tipper,

that huge changeling’s body in his place.

The prince of bone spurs and bad knees.

The year I first saw them play

Malone was a high school freshman,

already too big for any bed,

14, a natural resource.

You have to learn not to

apologize, a form of vanity.

You flare up in the lane, exotic

anywhere else. You roll the ball

off fingers twice as long as your

girlfriend’s. Great touch for a big man,

says some jerk. Now they’re defunct

and Moses Malone, boy wonder at 19,

rises at 20 from the St. Louis bench,

his pet of a body grown sullen

as fast as it grew up.

Something in you remembers every

time the ball left your fingertips

wrong and nothing the ball

can do in the air will change that.

You watch it set, stupid moon,

the way you watch yourself

in a recurring dream.

You never lose your touch

or forget how taxed bodies

go at the same pace they owe,

how brutally well the universe

works to be beautiful,

how we metabolize loss

as fast as we have to.

Source: Rising and Falling (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1979)

Biography

William Matthews's poetry has earned him a reputation as a master of well-turned phrases, wise sayings, and rich metaphors. Much of Matthews's poetry explores the themes of life cycles, the passage of time, and the nature of human consciousness. In another type of poem, he focuses on his particular enthusiasms: jazz music, basketball, and his children. His early writing was free-form and epigrammatic. As his career has . . .

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