To celebrate it is to marvel
At the ride of horses' masks
On greased poles as they circle,
Is to stay within the surface
Of change and growth and death
As if the choices of the moment
Could find a place for porcelain
When you are done with it.
You move the world with your mind
And it moves back, in a chess match
With your ethereal twin, to remind you it is he,
Not the game, that is eternal, that he will
Counter every move, or if you so choose
Show you how the victory you seek
Will be offered up again in countless times and guises
And you will never learn
The most basic things:
You are not alone,
You will never end,
The distant spheres of your creation
Are in the ground on which you sleep.
This ritual of motion, of Gods that come and go,
Is something to occupy a child with possibilities,
To fill the mind that feeds on limitation
With a destination, some imperfect fragment
To hold onto in the face of the whole,
Which always waits in stillness
Like a perfect hide and seek
Not needing to speak or be found,
For you can step into it at any moment,
You can enter without a door,
You can leap to its center free of all that gives it shape,
Unlike the Pas dye tablets and copper wires,
Cardboard holders and rabbit stickers
Pulled out each year from stuffy, commemorative boxes.
I'll take as my ritual something like tea time in Britain,
Where the merry-go-round rings to a full stop
Because we honor, in the midst of the flux
The relentless, the final, the endless...
