The rapture pulls each in from the outskirts,

to big-top glow through warehouse-window,

metallic-dim, the roar of airplanes overhead. This is no sacred place,

no sanctioned carnival. We run unlicensed, slip the gate.

Our clocks begin.

 

We hold our self-centered, rotate beyond.

Spin the track:

The child run away to join the fliers,

the Olympic qualifier cracking chalk-cloud cough between palms,

presto change-o. Tuck, roll, thread through

the needle of each foot wrenching us.

Around and around by yo-yo strings,

frail and fallible.

 

Still we string the sunlight like silk dancers,

weave a garden of even higher leaps.

Take me to the place

where the weighted goes weightless.

To know the practised arrest

of time and space for one solitary

momentum. Scholar of the body:

You can only stand so long before

the lines backing your legs

Let go.

 

And so

we’ll biff the jump, split the air,

crack back to the bottom rung.

Medic medic, so warm and real.

On the ground as human

as broken wings. But that’s another life. For now

we hold the center.

You can fly no higher than the stutter in your chest.

We rotate through fire. Thread the moment,

and again tomorrow,

until we slip the gap.