Thin

Some causes for celebration
in youth;
midsummer.
Lights strung changing
in abrupt constellations,

rain-dancing stilted figures, and
cart-wheeling fingers and palms
of a steel-girdered gymnast.
The evening weaves
through hanging carriages.

"I have to do the cliche thing and say-"
"It was taller
when you were little?"
She smiles, "I was on top of the world."

The Ferris wheel cycles round
the air: night-humid and
carnival sounds
are thick in it and thinning
toward the top-
the chime as a father helps his weak son
swing a hammer at the ring-the-bell;
a huckster yells "get your cotton candy,
candy apples."

All the old world
is gathered at the boundaries,
tobacco incense,
balmy wilderness.

"I love the silence up here."
"You're being sentimental."
"Am I? It's a carnival."
"It's something now."

She smooths back her hair
and fingers pressure on a bare brow.

"It's nice,
and sometimes when the wheel stops
you stay up here longer."

He glances at his thin wrists
as rain drops gather in their carriages
and the fairgrounds pull them into needles,
away from the weighty moon:
silver as a bell.