Fool Parade

This poem is a sort of experiment, playing with an excerpt from William Wordsworth's The Prelude, Book 12, the book that lays out spots of time, a concept that noodles deep into my brain-heart. Several lines at the beginning of stanzas place the reader in a certain aspect of time. I did something similar here, letting an aspect of time organize each stanza. And I let sound and recent events guide the word choice. I like the images that appeared, but am not certain how I feel about the poem on the whole, although I do like the end. It conjures for me an image in which I look at a photo of my grandma (who died in 2008), and she--in the photo--turns her head to look back at me--outside the photo. Were that scenario to happen, I would become everything. I miss her.

___________

Fool Parade

And midnight came.
Bottle rockets exploded behind our bedroom window.
The bear tore through our badminton net.
Chipmunks burrowed the seeds out of the pansy pot.
Inside the house the hardwood creaked.

The time arrived.
Fighter jets blasted through the sky over our roof.
The first frost put the mosquitoes to bed.
Euphemisms powdered our faces for the last fest.
Inside the house a fly clutched the ceiling.

It was the time.
The photo album lay open on the kitchen table.
A baby sat at the feet of her grandmother.
The silver-haired woman looked at me.
Paradise was why I had come.