A Sunday evening, an anniversary of an act of war,
my daughter and I ride the ferris wheel at the Mountain
State Fair where we’ve seen a man with an impressive
belly covered with a t-shirt that reads, “I approve of myself.”
We’ve seen the father on his cell phone while he spun
with his family on the Tilt-a-Whirl and a pair of sunglasses
fallen from the chairlift onto the white plastic roof of a tent
as we passed over the white plastic roof of the tent.
We’ve seen the young goats and the Brahman Bulls, the
enormous rabbits fluffed and prized. All the things that
give milk and meat, all the things that devour them.
As our little cart reaches the wheel’s top and begins
its move forward toward the descent, it jounces and my
daughter reaches for me. “I’m afraid of heights,” she
remembers, “Don’t let go of me.” We’ve timed our ride
for the perfect minutes, the sun had broken the mountain
of clouds above Mount Pisgah. Silver light pours
through everything like a liquid we’d all drunk willingly,
together, kneeling at the mass of farm animals and
assertive t-shirts and signs that read “not responsible for
dart-related injuries” people walk by in a deep trust,
a trust that no one will go crazy tonight, all the bolts
will hold, and the calf born this morning at 7 a.m. will,
in fact, live to one day be also on exhibit in a pen in a
tent at the Western North Carolina State Fair because
this is where everything belongs right now, illuminating
itself from within each great circuit breaker flipped on high.
In our little cart that rocks with the wheel's tick
tock of its own bright and timeless clock, I press
my hand into hers rested on her small 8-year old knees.
In the West, the sun is setting. “Look, the moon,”
she points to the East. Together we revolve there high and
low above the earth, the thing on the cosmic bead-thread.
Suspended, we ride the axis of night and day, dark and light,
cloud and the world that moves beyond cloud that breaks
open at times to show us it holds us as we circle the
loosely grinding September night.
