levelheaded: Running After a Soccer Ball That Went Into the Road

 

The title of this week’s poem by Jerome Daly suggests two possible outcomes: 1) person retrieves ball from road and game continues, or 2) attempting to retrieve ball, person gets hit by car and game is over. This idea that we, as humans, consistently straddle a line of pleasant vs. unpleasant outcomes is the crux of Daly’s poem.

 

The first stanza (bells fallen silent, broken wood) are further reminders of how quickly things can change. In stanza two, Daly’s smart line breaks call attention to the lines as individual units. The difficulty of companionship is broached as the word “with” is seemingly defined by the phrase that follows, “the slightest pressure.” A stanza later, the vastness of constellations is dwarfed to a pattern of freckles. Those freckles, which once seemed enormous and otherworldly in their beauty, can be ephemeral, ugly, and morbid as bugs splattered on a windshield.

 

The remaining stanzas function in much the same way as the first few. An image (counterfeit bag of money) suggests one thing (wealth is finally ours!), then lets us down (the bag’s got a hole in it). A sign meant to guide us is broken. The swing, an emblem of youth, is rusty. Typically jovial clowns are shaped like clouds, and we know clouds take other shapes. So long joviality!

 

Daly ends his poem with the lines “but a well seasoned cast iron pan / should always be slippery.” Here, the word “but” is especially interesting. It suggests that, despite the fact that things change and outcomes are not always positive, experiences are worth having anyway. When the remote control car works, we revel in the joy of it buzzing around. When the batteries die, we are bummed out, sitting cross legged on the floor. Both events are worthwhile. They’re the seasoning that give the pan its flavor.

 

 

– The Editors