Listen to poem:
Circus
Children with candy floss and wands of bright plastic,
Anticipation of the big top fantastic -
“Affordable family fun!”
The circus has come to town.
A carnival and a frisson of people,
The smell of the diesel,
It's magical and visceral –
Intense.
There's a girl in hoop earrings
Stands ready and steady and poised at the entrance,
Beckons our queue, guides us on through.
Later in sky blue and diamonds,
She’ll balance the line
Of the high tight rope walk.
To the right, a big burly man,
A wandering vendor of neon lit sabres -
“As you've never seen him before!”
Will throw a precision of knives at his wife.
Twenty years she has whirled in her satin and modesty chiffon,
On her own wheel of fortune.
To the left, there's a girl in an ordinary sweatshirt,
Wide spangled hairband, at a stand where pink sugar is spun.
Soon, she'll be spectacular!
Twirling on ribbons and ropes.
Belief suspended on the thrill of her peril,
Her grace.
We’ll be spellbound.
Sounds surround us as we take our seats ringside,
The beautiful boy selling programmes
Will descend,
Perform a daredevil act.
Our necks strained as we look
To the infinite blue of a tarpaulin sky -
Trapeze artist high -
He'll fly and he'll never grow older.
Dream big.
And then come the men,
Louder and bolder,
Selling bottomless buckets of popcorn and pop,
Sweet, salted and fizzy,
Between sets, they'll be busy.
A cascade of jugglers and clowns.
The big gestures of jesters and tumbling chaos -
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!”
And too soon the showtime is over,
We spill back out into the park,
Blinking into the afternoon,
Rare and recount the fleeting visions of awe and wonder.
Tomorrow the circus will have packed up and gone.
Leaving behind just a fairy circle of flattened grass
And the ghosts of muddy tyre tracks.
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