SINGING TO THE CARNIVAL
By Angela Turner


I’ve been singing
To the carnival
Ever since you can remember
Sometimes
With the stage fright
Of opening night
Trembling just beneath
The skin
Sometimes
Like the well worn
Paths of a sonnet.
Rote, familiar,
warm
And Lately,
As the ballad of sunset
Sends the lights to whirring
And the music to
Jar the night ‘s somnolence
Beginnings unfurl in you
Like the big top.
Death defying feats
Of the marvelous Maloneys,
Or tigers
Passing through the flame
And the stadium is seated
With row after row of
Possibilities,
I sing
With the belabored breath
Of a hospice
Knowing this chance could
Be my last
For all the new
And beautiful things
That will astound and amaze
Have designed the tent
For the next town
And their tunes
Require a different song
Than this singer
And her worn out notes
That grow the bones
building the man.
So just one last time
Let the old girl sing
To the head on pillow
And blankets all tucked in
Around the carnival in you.
That was once in me
Before I was amazed and astounded
By this life and all that awaits

Today, I miss,
The gunslinger in your stride,
Toting a bootfall, swagger laugh.
The plump of a whiskered cheek
Turned sunny side up
Harley Davidson pony tail,
Leathered up decorum,
Wild Child riding in on a heart of gold

Every now and then
When the cowboys seem so small
I think of you
Long shadowed against the platform of my childhood
Hear the faint whistle of John Wayne on the wind
Calling the memories up like
An Ole Spice bear hug
And the loss
Hits like a gunshot

I’ve been solitude’s
Groupie,
Clamoring behind
The long caravan of days,
Looking for
Vast,
Shore-like time
To stretch
Before my pen,
Like a nightingale’s muse
Utopian cravings
Of naked lyrics,
Fresh born and
Salient as the sea,
Washing,
Over tumbled fragments
Of being,
Pulled congruent
From the itching grains,
Of memories
Still inside their shell
I’ve ached to find that
Pearly stone,
In a frozen tundra
Lost to all sounds
But breath.

But, Time,
Gives flotsam and jetsam, Bumper car reality,
As I sit, in the crook of his elbow
Fumbling pens, and pages.
Incongruent thoughts like cluster galaxies I long to name,
But haven’t the moments to take a true likeness
Into the mirror’s chamber, before I’m ****** upon some other vista.
Race cars, and sirens, and something lost in the noise.

While I shift my balance
In order
To name,
These moments.
These Orions and Pleiades,
Frothy in the soup of beginnings,
And ends,
For they are my constellations
In the wide wonder
Of noisy breaths,
So half-kept
And unclean,
They face the page
In the jam-stained smile,
Of an impish motion becoming
Something.
And this verse,
Supposing at first
To stroll down one path,
Has chosen instead-
To laugh,
To be jangled away,
By the in-play
That fraction-moment’s make,
When side by side
They stay
Glorious
In change embraced,
Chaos unashamed.
So that poetry
So naively sought
has not the name
but all the heart.

They glow,
Like indigestion
In the pit of the belly
Perforating coals of
After
Thoughts,
Just like this jagged
Piece of you
Smelling like
Last night’s bon fire
Still on my shirt
Torn out like a page
In your story
Briefly reminiscent
Of something bigger
That the world
Should like to hear
Fading now
Like broth in the stew,
None of your shape
Still there is a likeness
Of you in every
Sip of air
So I breathe
As echo

The rain
Has pressed
Upon my arms
And chilled these bones
To shaking with the
Hoary breaths
Of resignation
Always returning
To these embers
Hoping for
The flame
That once
Held in the warmth
Like bed time prayers,
But, I should move along
From these frost covered
Stones.


I should not question
The way of mortality
Or the paths it
Excavates
Through my meadows
But this vigil
By your embers
Is my small protest
Of endings
The inordinate rudeness
Of it’s tone
And the barbaric
Wailing
In its execution
Perhaps,
It is also
The only dirge
I can sing
When my voice
Has been
Strained by the fear
Of being forgotten.