Archive
10/19/10 - (1)
The Runaways
Just a blink-and-you'll-miss-it once a blink-and-you'll-miss-it year, For three or four lifetime-in-a-day afternoons and evenings, The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus comes to town, Bringing, in its absoposilutely miraculous, fantastic, spectacular wake, Not only the "Greatest Show on Earth" but in all the galaxy, as well.
And you just have to know that the fantasy-struck kid in me Would be the last creature on the planet or in the entire universe To miss witnessing it unfold its extravagant three-ring extravaganza, Even if I were on my deathbed or, for better or worse, Already buried, six feet asleep, beneath night's darkened spotlights.
Indeed, this mid-October visit was no wooden-nickel exception, Except for the exceptionally glad-factor fact of brass-tack facts That I had, for the first time in at least no less than three decades, An eager accomplice in youthful exuberance, at my side, Sharing, as overeagerly as I, in the dazzle-dizzy delights high and low,
Right before, above, and below our first-row Celebrity Seats 8 and 9, So totally in our faces that we could all but touch them — Clowns, acrobats, jugglers, elephants, tigers, llamas, horses, dogs, Stilt-walkers, trampoline, trapeze, high-wire, and motorcycle-stunt troupes — Perform their acts, were they to ask us to don their catchy costumes.
Giddily, we indulged our madcap passion for nonstop derring-do action, Feats you wouldn't try even in your most reckless hopes and nightmares, The near-next-to-impossible and not-humanly-probable possible, And, in addition, did so with each other as soul-mates-in-crime in tow — A very special change of pace in our grown-up routines, for too sure. Doubtless, we were the oldest youngsters, youngest oldsters, there, Under that hockey-arena-turned-magical-pasture big top, The children with the brightest eyes, widest smiles, biggest goose bumps, The spectators issuing the loudest wows, eees, oohs, aahs, and yows, Clapping longer, laughing harder than the entire crowd combined.
What super-cool-duper, can't-believe-your-senses carefreedom thrives, When two runaways join the circus, for three not-nearly-long-enough hours, And lose themselves to the Cracker Jack, cotton-candy kids they were, Who rode elephants, tamed tigers, and flew, from Brooklyn and St. Louis, To the source of their unreachable dreams, on invisible trapezes.
10/19/10 - (1)
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