It's Still Life

Finds in a Sketch

There were shirtsleeves rolled up
and muscles tight and pressed,
and somewhere in the distance
lions roared their same complaint,
a sound that seemed soft as velvet.

Then the pulling and shifting, and
the circus tent came down, floating,
a cloud of dusty dry summer, a rising
curtain that nature couldn’t suppress.
The game was up. The work was done.

I stood in that emptying field with sun-
bleached posters in pieces across
the ground, and a tiny woman said,
“Same time next September, luv.”

And I wanted to push this year
into the next as fast as it would go.