Balancing Act

This day the world falls apart
And the tightrope walkers stay alive.

“We have always known balance,”
they say to the cracklings in the earth.
“You do not scare us.”

On the ground people are crashing,
Grasping at mica, fingernails ripping off in the rocks.
Breaking wrists to save each other.

“Just don’t look,” the tightrope walkers say.
“If you don’t look at the ground you will stay up.”
And they do their jobs as the circus tent comes down.

“Save me,” a woman scratches at a tightrope walker
as the earth she stands on shakes and fire nips her ankles.
And the tightrope walker keeps walking––
She can’t look at the ground.

The tightrope walkers keep walking
over spider webs and power lines
and put nimbus clouds in their ears
so all they can hear is rain.

Down below people scream like lightning
and the earth thunder-rumbles and burns.
“We have a job to do,” the tightrope walkers say,
but all their employers keel into the earth.

One tightrope walker hears a child’s howl
and she feels the silk strand bend under her feet.
“I can’t help you,” she won’t say,
stuffing more rain clouds in her ears. 

That tightrope walker comes to same spot in the sky.
She has orbited the earth; gone nowhere.
The tightrope walker takes the clouds out of her ears and
looks down.