How much more grounding could this place be?—round rock, polished
paths narrowing between ditches, culminating in a pyramid of
ten balancing sticks—one more than those nine pins, circa
5000 B.C., excavated from an Egyptian child’s grave,
carried by keglers through third century Germany, and set up
in Manhattan for the 1840 opening of the Knickerbocker Alleys.
Now, flashy techno-graphics and automatic scoring flinching
the upshot of each delivery: this indestructibly red-necked, white-knuckled,
Puritanical-blue game of second chances waits
wherever any spinning drunk who can stagger his steps and roll an arc
can pay and try and pay… and try to send his luck down lanes that mirror
the smoke-filled bar, the rows of shoes, the endless racks of Brunswick pearls—
wherever the local DJ plays Patsy Cline after Patsy Cline above the din—
wherever some quixotic bum runs the abrasive polisher
and strides gutters for stuck balls; you know the guy, the one who ain’t goin’
nowhere and couldn’t give a frog’s fat ass, whose father left him a mis-
monogrammed ball bag, a sweat-stained wrist brace and—fitting
his claw of fingers and thumb—a globe custom-drilled with holes.
To look at him—pop machine keys dangling from ripped jeans, hand-pumping air
into gutter-bumpers for kids wrestling six-pounders—is not to see him
alone at 3am, slinking forward in his two-tone Dexters, knocking
down every masochistic pin the re-setting table can stand. Still—
try to hear what only he hears: his brushing steps, the tap-
landing and receding thunder of the ball, the implosive crash and
intruding silence—try to hear the echo, the returning rumble, rolling
steadily uphill; try to see, as his ball settles into its cirque, how
the predictable arm sweeps the remaining pins or pin or emptiness away;
try to feel, between re-winding shots at the ideal, how his longest finger
upon his swingside hand cools above the exhalation of automatized air—
how his balance hand, hovering over the magic reset button, trembles.
Even with his liberty, his daily option to step off at any time,
to transgress the foul line, to feel the pins’ perspectives—
as he blends his steps, draws back the weight, speeds its descent, allows
release and follow-through—he takes a lifetime to fall
into form, all the while believing he might approach that perfect motion
and pick up any tottering bottle- or club-shaped thing; yet—
the faster he flings the sphere, indirectly cross-lane skidding
the distance, the sooner he finds himself
one frame closer or one game farther from 300
and steps out of the bowladrome and into the night
like every other skittler, like incognito you-and-me, like both pins comprising
that ineffable split.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 21, Issue 3.
William Rudolph earned his MFA in Poetry from Vermont College. He is looking forward to taking his new grandson bowling at the Bowladrome in Grinnell, Iowa, where he coaches student writers both at Grinnell College and in GC’s Liberal Arts in Prison Program.
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