A Twilight Before Winter

The yellow, three-masted tent has come down.

The yawning tiger, children’s laughter, clowns,

elephants and acrobats have packed up and

departed for another town.

All that remains here is a wind-blown field

and rows of high-rise buildings with indifferent

faces and a man playing an accordion to a

monkey on a leash beneath a solitary apple tree.

I think about you often, trying to remember

who you are and when we met

and what you may have looked like.

In that twilight did we see two fires blazing in the field?

Did we see two ravens rising from the apple tree,

leaving two white silhouettes behind?

The ravens must have heard the music and smiled

at the monkey but I wonder if they noticed me

or you– or whoever I was with

when the circus abandoned us for some other town.

© 2013 J.M. Keating

The Presence of What is Absent

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