The Turn of the Wheel
"The next turn of the wheel,
what do you think
about the next turn
of the wheel?"
- Charles Olsen
from his poem in Neon Obit
Every May the American Legion carnival came to town. One evening I went by myself. I had been to baseball practice and my glove stuck out of the back pocket of my levis. I wandered up and down the midway looking at the ferris wheel and the spinning number wheels and the prizes, listening to the noises and looking at local girls. I played the penny toss and lost, I drank pop and wondered what to do with myself. I didn't know any of the kids there, so around nine, as it had gotten dark, I decided to go home.
Halfway, I missed the familiar bulk of the glove against my ass, and, with sinking heart I touched my back pocket. The glove was gone.
It was a Rawlings trapper model, dark brown, almost black. It was heavy and stiff, waiting to be broken in. When Uncle Essex had given it to me I had quietly looked it over and that spring I began to try and play first instead of the outfield. It was no go. Right away something happened. It was as if something in my hand like the dark ball glove became mine to handle. Something dark in my hand meant a kind of fear - resistance - which related to my loneliness; it meant a vision of other guys who played first base, elegantly better than myself, and it meant I was somehow supposed to assume a look I didn't feel was mine. I was an outfielder. I imagined myself playing infield, maybe even shortstop. But not first. Shortstop was a tense, charged place which I had always wanted to bring into action, my action. My style. That was it. The oblique and powerful personality who played first base was glamorous, but not me. As happy as I had been to get the glove, even with its first feel, I had been numbed by the apprehension of first base. I had wanted the glove because my daydreams were me: backhanding a liner, stepping on first and firing the ball to second for the doubleplay.
But with the first baseman's glove in my hands, the Christmas tree in front of me and Uncle Essex standing by the revolving bookcase, my heart froze because I was no first baseman and because I badly needed a fielder's glove.
I went back. I walked through the mobbed carnival-street and asked older people, other kids and men in charge of the booths if they had seen it. No.
The glove wasn't under the bushes or by the street. Another kid had it now. I didn't know what to do.
It began to drizzle. I went down the street and my back ached with regret. If only I hadn't told Uncle Essex: "I can't use it, I'm a lousy first baseman," he would have known; I could have kept it, traded it or given it to someone I knew. Now my use of the glove was completely gone. Into some other kid's hand. The unspoken generosity and trust, the precious love that had, in my uncle's way, gone into such a glove! To simply drop and lose, for anybody to find at a carnival, was the severest irresponsibility: a carelessness coming from fear and nervous loneliness, hatred of what I had to accept, envy of other ballplayers and a knowing what I could get by with, and as I went up the walk to the front door, I opened the old scar for the first time, and the claw of my ancient self came out into the daylight of my consciousness and swiftly gouged my safekeeping. Then it slid back under. Poised for the next time: I had lost a resistance that had darkness in it, lost something that had made change and willpower necessary. The resistance wasn't lost forever, and since then my several selves have watched and waited, each time have clawed and hurt, killed, created and made strong - strong! The constant guard: strong for the fearful time when the loss might not be accidental, but a constructed purpose.
poetrymagazines' note: This issue has a handwritten note, apparently by the editors or author, crossing out some of the text, as shown below. The text reproduced above is the version post-edit.
Page(s) 11-12
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