18 May 2009 | Vol. 9, No. 1

Letter After the Circus

by JAN LAPERLE

The ants carry their magnificent loads with such gentleness

across and into the dirt which, for the dirt (without means for movement)

must be the worst torture. And I think right now we are all

torturing each other. Daring Young Men on the Flying Trapeze.

Gentle Ponies. High Wire Daredevil. With such magnificence

in the world, it seems I would begin to believe something else.

Wind. Rain. All descriptions are masks. Sirens, right now,

screech through the air of this house. The gentle ponies were not

gentle at all. The rev-up of the daredevil highlighted a set

of invisible strings. Before you met me you believed you were

a good man. One morning I rose into the next act—naked, bed-warm—

toward the river and I became the river. Even with your worm,

bobbers, hooks, you could not get me back. The river

pulls at the shore. I stomp my foot and the ants scatter.

The circus goat struggled in my grip. Accuracies become other things.

I was your sky. Birds, my messages. What, again, did they tell you?

As I hovered there between you and the universe, who swallowed who?

Clouds—masks above trees, and everything looked like a reach for me.

Sky became sky. River river. And as I watch the ants

haul away the bird seed, I wonder what it is that I have become.