Silver Ball

In high school, I chewed a lot of gum.
With the colorful paper, I made zigzag chains.

I would save the shiny wrappers
For English class, and then separate
Wax paper from aluminum,
And take the shiny metallic wisp
And roll it onto my accretion
Of aluminum gum wrappers,
Until I had a smooth, shooter-marble sized
Ball, shiny and perfect.

Holding a sphere makes me happy.

A semester I did that, paying scant attention
To Hawthorne and Hemingway.

I handed it around during the transit of
A Christmas progressive dinner
And a boy threw it out the window of the bus.

I still don’t know why.

So I made another one the next semester,
Chewing, perhaps, a little more frantically.

I ended up with another perfect, shiny sphere,
The right size to fit in the palm of my hand.

Maybe it was all for the best that the first vanished.
I might have been tempted to make the first too large,
That error of artists, wanting to add too much.

Like if I were now to insert a meditation on
What happened to that first ball, thrown out
Into the December night.

Did the driver behind see that flying silver ball?
Did it land in a yard, for the lawn mower to mangle
Next spring?