Trapeze Artist
A poem for change
Trapeze Artist
Swinging high above the seats,
partially filled,
I cling to what I’ve known:
one bar, familiar and safe.
I tell myself I can hang out all day
on this bar, because I’ve mastered it.
Is that true? Is it mastery that
locks my chalky hands to the bar?
With each back and forth,
the other bar approaches, then recedes,
approaches, then recedes,
an oscillating siren song
of possibility and peril. Try as I might,
I can’t not perceive its call:
You chose to be up here, dear one.
You chose to play at this game,
so why not really play it?
But when I look down,
my innards drop.
Sweat erupts.
Breath vanishes.
An old voice I recognize
sidles up, admonishes:
You are right to be scared.
You could plummet to earth,
lose everything
lose everyone
you love.
It’s a smart voice, this voice of fear.
It knows me well:
What is waiting for you
on the other side?
Who will you be there?
Is there even a “there” there?
Fear is doing
what fear does best:
protecting
the one who pleases all
and offends none. It soothes:
Relax. There’s no rush.
Hold tight
until another bar is safely in hand,
until the crowd roars its approval.
That day will never come,
we both know it.
I look across the chasm.
To arrive at the new,
I know I must let go,
suspend myself
in rootless air,
turn and reach
toward nothingness
I also know
the only true audience
is divine presence.
That when I play the role
I came here to play,
fully and completely
she and I are as close
as one
What I don’t know
is what’s waiting for me
or who I will be
or if there is a “there” there.
But trapeze artists are artists,
are they not? And art that risks nothing
is no art at all.
In the moment that I commit,
my hands open
to welcome an eternal memory:
the alchemical magic
of this liminal space,
this graceful void
I have surrendered into
countless times before
is faith.
Oh yes!
I remember!
It’s the only place on earth to fly!
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Your comments mean so much to me! Do let me know what you’re thinking.
Hi Mary,
I had to ponder this poem for a while. I wish I knew how you do it, come up with this stuff week after week and always write about something that speaks to us on a deeper level. Thank you.
So, it seems to me that in this poem, Trapeze Artist, you’re talking about the game of life: “you chose to be up here… you chose to play at this game…” I’ve often heard it said that we do chose the circumstances of our lives before we even get here, but we forget. My friend says, “remember, we signed on for this gig.” So, I guess we might as well go with it. There must be some reason we’re here when we consider the quadrillion probabilities of our non-existence. I read a quote by Joanna Macy that said, “There’s a song that wants to sing itself through us. We’ve just got to be available.”
Your pal, Rilke, said in his poem: “Go to the Limits of Your Longing”:
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
Book of Hours, I 59
I stumbled on this poem just yesterday. I had never read it before. It gives me goosebumps, considering what I had just written above.
Oh, how I know this balancing act! 🤗
This is lovely.