Carl Stevens' Journal: A Poem On The End Of The Celtics Run
The strongest of ties sometimes get severed cuz no pair of legs can run forever.
No car that's made - a Lamborghini or Rolls - is exempt from time's exacting tolls.
The greatest beauties on the movie screen know that the years can erode their sheen.
The only constant on life's rude range
is the inevitable promise and constant of change.
Change is the reality that people here meet as they walk to work across Causeway Street, aware that two branches are gone from the tree.
Gone are the rest of the Celtics' big three.
It was Allen and Pierce and Kevin Garnett who cut from the rim a champion's net, the foundation of a wonderful, Celtics team.
They brought to this building banner 17.
Their grit and talent and determination
galvanized the region, Celtics Nation
Erupted in glory, like the day of old,
from them a victorious story was told.
It was the sweetest story that C's fans had heard since the days of McHale, Parish, and Bird.
But just like those three, from green days long gone, the past becomes present, and the future's too strong.
Age tugs at the muscles, and taps on the bones, time, just time, can steal any king's throne.
And these men were kings, in this court of parquet,
They're gone, but the memories won't go away.
They hang from the rafters, they reside in our hearts.
Champions, in a way, never really depart.
Slowly, sure, they're eroded by years,
But are reborn through time, in the echoes of cheers, in the memories that shimmer in emerald green,
in rafters eternal: banner 17.
Listen to Carl's poem here:
