RIP: The greatest show on earth
The announcement came:
This was the last year for the circus–
The working man's circus,
The last ******* child of Ringling Brothers
And P.T. Barnum
Good, my wife said
Think about the animals.
I nod in absent agreement -
But I am at Coney Island as it might have been, once.
And watching amusement parks in Celeron, Bay Ridge, the Palisades and a hundred others places vanish -
One by one like altar candles extinguished before the recessional.
I am a young boy staying up late tearing through Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked this Way Comes"
while everyone else in the house is sleeping.
I am at a City Lights book store in San Francisco
Where Lawrence Ferlinghetti is sharing his cotton candy with Diane Arbus and Allen Ginsburg
I am listening to "Take Five" in stereophonic sound.
I am behind the Big-Top
with Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens
trying to catch a glimpse of the show through the shadows -
Then being told to get away by a large sweaty man who doesn't smile.
I am eating peanuts salted in the shell.
I am holding my daughters tiny hand
while my son hides behind me–
a clown is walking by.
