Other Lives

'Waiting for the Sky to Fall' reviewed by Maureen Jivani on Todd Swift's blog Eyewear .

Paddington Recreation Grounds Boys on their field lit like an aquarium sad to not be alight, like them, with goals that a foot or hand can win; poetry’s rules no less old than theirs, but poets are not only players on green grass, night and day, also the old-eyed others edged in the park, who nod at each leap in air, each attained yelp and elbowed throw, the muscular panoply of bodied action folded into hours with an end; slow to leave, friendless, they once stood on the line, or blew as referee, their bones now cold and all trophies pawned. So poems both play and hold, gravely, as if a mourner stood, one self under the hood of the ground, the other, above, head bowed, to pray. We stand and lie, this way, to make the words hit home. So ball and word fly untrue until a hand undoes the flight by taking it down from abstract to real motion, feeling out the meaning of its gut, impacted with the lob’s sorrow-start, the needing thrower’s heart, which is to gain the art’s accolades, not be ...