This is another one that's--
this one is very new, that I'm writing.
I'm still not clear about everything
that I want in this poem.
But when I was about five, I went to the circus
with my family.
And my father was making movies, home movies,
which-- he always had his camera at all great events.
And what happened was a woman from the trapeze
fell down and was killed, and he caught it on the camera.
And he still has this on film.
And whenever I see the movie, I can't figure out whether or not
this is something I really saw-- which my parents tell me
I really saw it, or whether it's something
that I've seen the film so many times
that that's now my memory, the film, not what I really saw.
You know, you repress horrible things like that.
So this is called "Young Woman on the Flying Trapeze."
My father's handheld camera caught elephants in his lens,
shrank them harmless, the size of captured bees in a jar.
A lion tamer, sitting in his chair.
Father kept nature in perspective.
I saw the human pyramid balance on an acrobats head and bicycle
along the spider webs, all-- sorry--
and bicycle along the tight rope's single strand
of spider web.
They're 10 foot snapping of balance pole bending.
No safety net to land in.
The trapeze artist caught his partner in mid-air,
caught by the camera's perfect timing,
as they swung in and out of my line of sight.
I was five.
In nightmares, the body falls straight
into the dreamer's eye, who wakes before hitting bottom.
Did I blink then?
Did I glance away?
The moment her silver body tumbled
like an angel out of heaven?
I don't remember it.
My father slows the clicking projector down frame by frame.
The lady trapezer aims for her partner now and somersaults.
Her partner's wavering hand connects
with her sequined wrist.
His other hand misses, clamping shut
on the air that frames her.
No connection.
Her body blurring its slurred speech as,
on the sawdust floor, the camera locates the broken italic
of her flesh.
No connection.
I still can't focus, no matter how many times I see it,
no matter how many times my father runs the film.
Projected in reverse, my father has her climb
the ladder of light one more time for my benefit,
as she performs a last miraculous escape.
But he can't rescue her or me from gravity forever.
Backwards, she bullets up towards the bull's eye
of her partner's fist, her face enlarged in its unknowing,
and comically lands on the platform, squarely
on her own two feet.
Spliced into the same reel, unreal documents
of the commonplace.
A picnic underway.
Then it is Sunday.
The living room upholstery is brand new.
The frigid air is white enamel white.
Then, a lucky break to catch this.
I am crawling, hoisting myself up my mother's skirts
to take my first steps, fighting to keep my balance,
staggering towards whatever it was I reached
for out of camera range.
A speck on the eye's periphery.
And the camera held and followed me,
exploring these unfamiliar heights.