Imagination Acrobatics

Imagination Acrobatics

In cirque du soleil fantasy,
acrobats fly all lightness of body
above jade green meadows
scarved with scarlet poppies.
Before them, emerging on a hill crest,
harlequin clowns with chalk-white faces,
flopping shoes, and arms disjointed,
whistle and hoot and gesture.
Then drifting fog lifts above an azure sea.
where dark shapes undulate,
swimming ominous and arbitrary.
The phantoms surface into dolphins
trailing strands of phosphorescence,
racing through sea sunlight shattered twilight,
bewitched with speed.
The acrobats somersault to join the frenzy,
as upon silver transport they spring forward with the rush.
Arms lifted, they embrace the pure energy of haste.
Then flipping to a swelling sea crest,
they tumble…gasping…crashing,
reconnecting with the earth,
mere driftwood on the sand.

Bonnie Marshall