Under the BigTop
i stop at the kitchen sink
to swallow a pill,
that pill, i think,
in fact
a ringling brothers barnum & bailey
admittance ticket to a small act
being performed
outside the window:
an acrobat outfitted
in a costume sporting
a bushy gray tail—
a costume perhaps worn recently by a political protester
waving an I’M NUTS ABOUT DEMOCRACY! sign?—
traverses the tightrope of pointed tips
atop slats in the stockade fence
across the back of the yard
nimbly and unhesitatingly
and, without breaking momentum,
scales the slope of one side of the garage roof effortlessly
and races down the slope of the other,
from there to dance through
the tangled maze of slender bare branches
in the pussywillow before
leaping beyond the three rings
and out the canvas flap of the circus tent,
not in any way spent,
nourished by nothing more than
the here-it-is-in-front-of-me
pleasure of moving from one place
to another
with balance and grace.
—dotty seiter
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3 x 3″; watercolor on paper
card #35 in a color swatch series
2025
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Notes about poem and art:
• “Under” is a free verse poem of noticing.
• Brought Into brought some surprises my way. I’d been planning for a few weeks to paint greens and berries from our backyard juniper tree, and I had an image in my mind. It wasn’t until I got up close and personal that I learned that a juniper’s juvenile foliage typically consists of sharp, hard, needle-like leaves and mature foliage is often scale-like and softer. See above: sure enough! Also, the berries—which aren’t even true berries but seed cones; who knew?!—take 2-3 years to ripen, and go through a range of colors from pale green to blue white to dark blue. I’d thought all the berries would be the beautiful blue white I remembered picking for indoor winter decorating years ago but, nope!, right now our tree has only some pale greenish berries leaning a bit towards blue along with a bunch of dark blue berries.
dottyseiter: now playing 
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