Native Hero

Native Hero


I can never call the reservation home
or its water tower or the community center
where I play basketball every winter
measuring the decline of an Indian
by the number of points he scores

and when Reuben throws in 68
my white friends ask me why
he never played ball anywhere else.
I say he plays ball everywhere,
Nespelem, Worley, Plummer, Wapato....

He could be 25 or 45 I don't know
what he calls home except the roads
leading from reservation town to town
and maybe the baskeball he keeps
tucked under his arm more gently

than any baby he may have fathered
when some Indian girl opened herself
to his reputation and memories
of his jump shot falling from the sky
into the bottom of the net, a salmon

hung out to dry for all of us
to tear into strips and eat,
sitting in the bleachers waiting
to watch Reuben play and never grow old.
We all keep those dice locked in our wrists

but Reuben rolls sevens everytime he shoots.
He is the man who knows the color of bones
in stick game. He is the man who never loses
a hand in poker or blackjack. He can drink
every other man under the table and still take

someone else's wife home. I can look him
eye to eye at the tip. We could be two snakes
entwined fighting for the ball. I know
no matter where it goes or what hand it chooses
I can never call the reservation home.


Sherman Alexie.........from The Business of Fancydancing