Enabled Poem by David Nelson Bradsher

Enabled

for Charles Delaine Bradsher, Sr.

1.

He’s smaller now. He never was that tall,
too short for top-shelf pots, or basketball,
though at the Y—at lunchtime—there he was,
launching a shot amid the bigs, because
a man with limitations either ends
disabled dreams or, grasping hold, ascends.

2.

He’s taller now. Two strokes (and age) combined
to wilt an arm, a leg, but not his mind,
fighting the loss of an ischemic crash
to rise above the dross and ember-ash,
helping the doubters see and understand
a man with Phoenix-feathers in his hand.