And here i dreamt I was a ringleader

The clown on Boylston has a flower on his lapel

That squirts water and his bow tie spins. He reaches into his bag and pulls

Three balls; red, yellow, and blue.

He tosses them in a recycled fashion and the children with their balloon stare

Intrigued enough to let their mothes drop open. When they recompose themselves

Their throats to dry to call the first time to their parents. They cough and repeat themselves

With such earnest conviction, and their parents feign emotion so as not to discourage.

They watch again as he turn the elongated balloons into fish, and stars, dogs and rabbits. Their old

balloons slip from their hands and float high into the early afternoons star-speckled purple, erratically

moving from side to side, knocked around like a ship in the currents. The children don’t care, the ferris

wheel is called, its lights bright enough now, unchallenged by the sun to draw them in. They ride with

their cotton candy, like pink and blue fire up into that night sky where the world is visible and their

stomachs drop. A car below curious hands are dropping pennies through quickly constructed steel

girders, with patches of blown out bulbs and chipping paint. The rides around it spin and spin and play

music that intertwines with the smell of greasy dough and cigarettes and the old men, holding the

pretzels and soda watch the younger men with their chests puffed out like peacocks throw baseballs at

tin cans and prove their worth to adorning girls who cherish the giant stuffed animals for what they are,

an adornment of pride, a symbol of small town recognition’s high society. The clown stands between me

and the Ferris wheel, each juggling their own, giving the small time bar maids and the divorced janitors,

whos children only know sacrifice a seed of a dream. The courts and the jester travel the country, and

make kings of the poverty stricken for a night in mid-august when the world has forgiven the day.