(after Wallace Stevens' '13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird') <br /> <br />I. <br />The basketball bounces, <br />frees from the hands, <br />dribbles itself down to drops, stops. <br /> <br />II. <br />The basketball sails through hoop after hoop, <br />not from me, but in my hoop dreams. <br /> <br />III. <br />The basketball in the sky is ourselves, <br />planet earth. <br /> <br />IV. <br />The basketball is dropped from Sears Tower, <br />zooms through an open sewer cover <br />on Wacker Drive, and wedges between the <br />jaws of a subterranean alligator. <br /> <br />V. <br />The field is empty, a basketball <br />rolls down a hill to my feet, <br />its owner waves from the top of the hill. <br /> <br />VI. <br />The Christmas basketball is forgotten <br />in the closet, gathering dust <br />until May. <br /> <br />VII. <br />My neighborhood park’s fieldhouse has a locked room, <br />filled with softballs, bats, soccer balls, <br />and basketballs. The room smells of <br />dirt and defeat, of victory and laughter. <br /> <br />VIII. <br />A basketball in summer is seldom by itself. <br />A person is never far behind. <br /> <br />IX. <br />Is there anything quite the color of a basketball? <br /> <br />X. <br />A snake crawls the side of a basketball. <br />The only way to go is not up, <br />but in circles. <br /> <br />XI. <br />A truck rolls over a basketball. <br />It becomes a pancake of the past, a frisbee with no future. <br /> <br />XII. <br />When boredom slows the day, dribbling a basketball <br />and kicking your legs over it always speeds the hours <br />and records them forever in your muscles, <br />which, by the way, have minds of their own. <br /> <br />XIII. <br />I did a thousand lay-up shots in college basketball. <br />Now all I can show for it is dunking change <br />in tollway bins on the I-94 <br />without stopping the car.<br /><br />Cynthia Gallaher<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/13-ways-of-looking-at-a-basketball/
