CIRCUS

The elephants enter soft the way

the evening sky is sometimes soft

before a storm, when gravity

will hold its breath for thunderbeasts

whose curl and coil cannot be tamed.

Clowns rule circumference and pluck

disorder from the cloudy edge

of smile, strutting along a boundary

where luck, and luck's companion—sorrow—

stroll together arm in arm.

Beneath a firmament of tent

a child will swing again the simple

wooden swing in her backyard,

and gravity will hold its breath,

will hold her vast unquiet in its hands.

Gwendolyn Jensen's poems have appeared in the following journals: Amethyst Arsenic, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Comstock Review, The Malahat Review, Measure, Nashville Review, Salamander, and Sanskrit.