An Autumn Digression

Carnivale

We wander through the rising morning as the boy sings protest songs off key.

Carnivale’s in town.

The tattered banners of last year cry and wheedle beneath us, we both feel them as we walk. Abandoned tents, discarded tinsel, the bearded lady sending a desperate telegram in the night.

I know his questions as he steps over the debris, agility born of youth and ignorance. He knows my answers in the echoes of my every heavy, plodding step behind as I push through the wildmen of Borneo.

“As the present now, will later be past…” The only sound is his green vibrato as he challenges his midway, soon there will be little need for me amidst his fortune tellers and contortionists yet here I am. Here I am. The times they are a’changing as I hum like a wounded organ grinder.

He looks back and we stop, death white show horses wheeling around us as a pretty girl spins by her teeth.

I take his hand and ring the bell, hoping she will answer.

The Carnivale’s in town.

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