Thinking About the Fairground Closing

When the fairground closes like a thought
we were afraid to finish.
Music lifts its hands and leaves.

Cups of sweetness, drained to rings.

We walk home with sugar on our tongues
and grit in our shoes.
The body still wants
what the clock has refused.

Each bright thing carries its own dusk

in the pocket of its color.

I want to say to myself: joy is not a lie.

I want to say: it is only brief.

The kiss rehearses its absence.

The song is already folding.
Between the start and the leaving
we are allowed a small weather of yes.

But the weather does not stay.

It learns our names and then forgets them.

Look:
the lights are being unplugged
one soft surrender at a time.

Children still run in their borrowed kingdoms.

Adults count what the night will cost.

Somewhere a ride cools its metal bones.
It is not the pleasure that hurts us,

but its obedience to time.


It will not make a promise

it cannot afford to keep.

It says to me: I was real.

It says: I am done.

Such sweetness teaches us to grieve gently
against the dimming.
We must place the moment back in the world
like a cup turned upside down
inside a long cabinet of evenings
and thank it for the juice.