Old Men Playing Basketball Poem Analysis

Eventual Darkening

The more experienced an individual, the darker it appears. Annie Drew’s use of matches created a darkening path in an autumn forest. The further down the path, the darker the color, the heavier the tone, the smoother the texture. In the poem Old Men Playing Basketball, B. H. Fairchild suggests that there is an eventual downfall to all lives; they try to reclaim their competence but doing so only evokes the nostalgia for the lost youth. Through the scene of old men basketball, Fairchild captures the details of the old men’s unfitness and laments on the speed that life decays at and the inabilities that comes with aging as memories of their younger self are still fresh. Though the old men can never be young again, memories
Fairchild’s use of analogy in the last stanza of the poem suggests that there is an uprise at the beginning of one’s life, but they all step towards the ending, and some when on this journey, they will realize that they are no longer at the peak. Fairchild mentions in the last stanzas of the poem, “Boys rise up in old men.” This gives readers a feeling that this situation is not only for these veterans, it is for all lives. They will grow and will eventually hit the point in life when youth is no longer existent. In the final stanza of the poem, when “he drives towards the net, a glass wand of autumn light breaks over the backboard.” Fairchild creates the image of a continuous motion, and it is also the image that the poem ends on. Autumn, or descriptively, the fall, is the ending of a vigorous uprise, and is the period between the peak and the end. Fairchild symbolically shines the autumn light behind the backboard as if there is a downfall after the scoring. Indeed, the jumping and the landing of this player scoring a point symbolizes the rise and fall of an individual’s life. The glass wand, which is the source of the autumn light, is like the curse that justifies this process. Again, right after introducing the image of the autumn light, Fairchild adds to this image, “Boys rise up in old men, wings begin to sprout at their backs. The ball turns in the darkening air.” Although the word “rise” used in this line
One has to land somewhen after taking off. Although the life expectancy has significantly increased in the years and veterans are better taken care of, Fairchild feels the coming of age as he writes this poem at the age of 56. When the speaker of the poem raises questions with “I wonder,” the questions are almost sardonic to be asked. However, it is not Fairchild questioning others but questioning himself as if he is one of those that are being described in the poem. Laments on coming of age have not been rare in the history of literature, yet Fairchild’s use of imagery vividly capturing the process of one’s shiny but darkening life in a length of a poem is evocative and