April | 2017 | Andrew Spradling

The headline read “Flytrap Frolic Scavenger Hunt,”

Like a lost song from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club,

Or the flipside of Prudence, or Norwegian Wood,

I’m Only Sleeping, Nowhere Man, or The Walrus that could.

But a spread of fun pictures instead it was,

From a man with an eye for just such a cause,

And taken as such, probably not his best work,

But from mountains to ocean his lenses still lurk.

Significant to me that the man reemerged,

My brother on-court, this valley he purged,

After coming crucially close to self-destruction,

It gladdens me to tag him resurrected.

So as Sammy the Bearded Dragon knows,

Or snakes called corn and sinful hognose,

A sea of Venus, i.e., Little Pot of Horrors,

His ongoing search, it knows no borders.

We converse by phone every few months,

To catch up, reminisce, regale in the hunt,

To laugh at my screens or his beautiful passes,

Man, he’d put the defense on their asses.

He was workin’ with Bunny, could shoot out the lights,

When Mountaineers were backing off the great White,

The former Black Eagle was ready for flight,

Too bad Coach Stu couldn’t see what was right.

He could thread any needle and drive to the hole,

He was hell on wheels at 55 years old,

Schoolin’ the youngsters both skinny or tall,

When I floated on with him, he’d get me the ball.

They’d look at us both, like we were from Mars,

Scratching their heads, aligning the stars,

They’d ask, “You two played together before?”

“Naw, we’re just lucky,” we’d wink, say no more.

Andrew Spradling