“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”

– The Premature Burial

NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS

 

At night at the circus

Is the big top empty

Clowns, acrobats, freaks

Tucked cozy in bed

Crowds so too at home

Children dreaming of

Wonder, thrills, and joy

All the animals fed and

Down for the night

Silence reigns the

Deserted tent?

Oh, think again

It is not so

The show must go on

Generations of performers

Departed are there

Some reprise their final,

Fatal performance endlessly

The fall from the high wire

The tiger rebels forever

Dispatching the Tamer

All of them trapped

Keeping the show going

In the shadowy borderland

Between Life and Death

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© 2019 Bob Wertzler

Bob Wertzler is retired from almost twenty years in the mental health field in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist”, seems to fit. In 2006 he retired to move to Western North Carolina to help and become primary care giver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was work at various times as a soldier (US Army 1967-70), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, and other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip its been.”

Bob blogs at: https://cabbagesandkings524.wordpress.com