The zen of somersaults

 

 

The Bagel

by David Ignatow

 

I stopped to pick up the bagel

rolling away in the wind,

annoyed with myself

for having dropped it

as it were a portent.

Faster and faster it rolled,

with me running after it

bent low, gritting my teeth,

and I found myself doubled over

and rolling down the street

head over heels, one complete somersault

after another like a bagel

and strangely happy with myself.

 

 

The delightful image of a man chasing a bagel and turning into one reminds me of an old story my mother used to tell. Whenever we wouldn’t eat our vegetables she’d talk about her twin sister, a woman who was never mentioned except at dinnertime. This twin sister always refused to eat peas until one day she blew up into a huge green ball and rolled down the street, never to be seen again, a victim of the (self-inflicted) disease pea-itis.

 

I can’t serve peas without thinking about pea-itis. And I can’t pass a bagel shop without thinking about David Ignatow’s “The Bagel,” a poem I’ve loved and kept for a long time now. The way the speaker lets go of teeth-gritting pursuits to enjoy child-like physicality always makes me smile.

 

Which in turn reminds me of my son when he was a little boy (I’m beginning to turn into a bagel myself, one memory tumbling into another as I roll along this post). He went through a somersault phase in which he would only walk if he absolutely could not somersault. He somersaulted dozens of times a day, down the hallway, across the kitchen floor, outside on the grass. I started to worry he was going to be perpetually dizzy but after a couple of months he resumed normal ambulation.

 

Here’s a bio of Ignatow from an earlier blog post:

 

David Ignatow (1914-1997) was the child of Russian immigrants. (Of course! That Russian fatalism is all over this poem.) He was born in Brooklyn, and after graduating from high school, worked as a bookbinder and newspaper reporter. Work being the subject of this poem and of many of his poems, it’s interesting to note how many different places Ignatow worked in his life to support his family: at a vegetable market, hospital, telegram office, paper company (hello, Michael Scott), and several universities.