The Carousel

Memory is dance. A moving
from place to place, that
seems to stretch on
towards forever.

Things got distorted part way through, better
to wish for things that didn’t exist, than
to find out through their wishing
the things they made true. God came to me
and demanded a refund, the world
revolves on money, the memory
of gods and God wanted more:
a movement, a ride on the greatest carousel
that was the world. They dreamed
and moved, the gods of ordinary lives, a song
expounded in their hearts, a hurt
expanding through their mouths.

And so the world turns, the ashes move.
The sun strips across the sky in blinding streaks of gold.
Memory is gold, is grace
made real. All is memory now,
time-faded, gold-embossed, someone’s
album from the Roaring Twenties.
The world turns,
the sky spins, the seasons wheel
on and on and on.

A child cries watching the procession of horses
in rounded circles in the pier above the seas of Coney Island.
May he be silenced by the realization of movement, of memory.
All children, these gods, the recklessly dizzy Earth
riding a single rounded wheel turning drunk
through winding revolutions of sky! We
are always moving, always remembering.
There is no stillness in life, nor death,
only us, our moving, the stars,
our constant motion.