The carny artist makes black scribbles,
laughing, a good game, a show.
He can do us in a minute,
the fastest ever, he says,
his lines a rusty sideshow ride
careening through funnel cake fog.
We are there somewhere,
points on a line we’ve fallen into,
rising, screaming, then falling
into a bell-shaped dead silence.
He laughs and laughs.
Author’s note: On the feeling that too often creeps in watching the daily White House coronavirus briefings.
Mark Spicknall is a manufacturing and business consultant, a sailor settled in the mountains, who writes to try to make sense of the tides, the climbs, storms and the stars.