"Self-improvement as Schopenhauer would see it" by Bob Hicok

I didn't take up the cartwheel until I was fifty.A Ferris wheel had broken loose and the waythe townspeople chased it made me jealous.I wanted to be loved by childrenfor being round and ignoring what the adults said.I wanted to be feared by adultsfor what I might do to their roses.More than anything, I wanted to roll.Tumbleweeds roll and cigars and diceare rolled and Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe Mortonbecame Jelly Roll Morton in New Orleans,where Creole rolls off people's tonguesand into the Mississippi as it rollsmuddy-muscled to the sea. I'm not very goodand fall on my head a lot. I should wear a helmetor get better or be more spiritualor copy the great artists and let it be knownthat I'm open to drinking too much wineand drawing life on the walls of the baras I see it. But doesn't that sound like work?The cartwheel should not be work. Getting oldershould be child's play. The Ferris wheelkept going all the way to Canada,as if it wanted asylum from our pawn shopsand to order the veal in French. I planto keep going all the way to the end of the pasture,which is what I call breath, the pasture, I refuseto leave language up to strangers, to cowerbefore the dictionary when I can sitwith paper and pencil and name the stormcape or blanket or motheror all of them, the storm is all of themand over.Bob Hicok's new book, Elegy Owed, is due out soon from Copper Canyon.