Backspin

Backspin

My father and his friends once
decided to roll a bowling ball
down the steep brick hill on Maple
Street. The ball didn't just spin
as it gained momentum.
It started to bounce
and took flight. A miracle,
Dad told me, that no one was hurt.
But more so such shining weight,
a ball with awkward expression took flight,
free in the sky with a hysteria of sixteenth notes
and through the egress window a wing of moth
beats, past the smallest new foal in the pasture,
the ball roared around an alley of thunderheads
well past the moon
and rebounded off Mars, made a face

smashed out of orbit,
flung through a crack
in the universe and into the dream
of a Parisian architect, then into the collective

and spun a ragged trail of microindentation
before it leapt over the hood
of a Ford Galaxy
and finally landed in the grassy island
in front of the Y
where it waited for my teenage father
and his friends to join
in harmony with pulse
unfrozen a rapture of notes.
Specks from a clouded check of flies
an ear spins on a narrow stalk
a vacant house across the street
turns lights on and off
A passing Comet Cyclone catches
the rays as it climbs
an approaching hill.