Circus Pony

What joy to say our short, winter days
are behind us now. Gone the old life we filled
with empty laughter, the times we’d pack
the backseat with every hitchhiking clown
we happened upon—our record was eight
until the year our fathers died. Gone
the red-nosed hours, our grotesque smiles
drawn large and wide, when we rehearsed
our cold routines of “Hey, are you ok?” and “Fine.
I’ll be fine.” Remember the long seconds—three
slow ones in all—before your face
that took an hour to apply turned grave
or the look you wore, sadder than any clown’s
in the rain, that was my cue to knit my brow
and continue fumbling with the three-sizes-too-small
hammer you handed me so I could once more fix
the swaybacked rocking horse we purchased
to ward off an unspoken future in which we
are continents apart, surrounded by our hungry
new families as we slice and dismantle
the same braised roast and lament how
we could have let hope stray, how the story
of our lives might have been different
if it had contained, however lame, something
we could have ridden into the sunset on.