July 5, 1994 the vast field in silence after the big top has disappeared in a night when clowns & midgets project elongated shadows by the antique kerosene lamp inside the compressed trailer saturated with clown paraphernalia you appear there in the ocean field silence a black woman in a moonlit night stillness while acrobats sleep the elephants sleep the juggling chinese lady sleeps & one trailer carrying the dormant midgets & clowns starts its journey under a heavy rain to the next field in the next town & denny at the wheel talks to me of how he was rejected by the beautiful trapeze woman while he drives the rusty truck rain splashes at my feet the moon hiding in clouds your black figure deeper than night is is the vision of the sleeping clown inside the trailer before twilight reveals the next field in another town when the clown will sit in the next tent waiting for the music signal to enter the crowd to perform the routine act the elephant’s entrance majestically will follow carrying millennia memory in the arena away from poachers hunting for his life severing he nearly extinct precious ivory tusks & in his memory imprinted your primeval black the night the moon escaped inside the clouds after the big top was disassembled & gone when all the last lights had died out & what was the circus is now a silence your black & night resonating still in the silent field |