Happy Pi Day

Magic Land

The swerving rollercoasters round me roared,
As I traversed the park myself. Though bored,
I stayed near, faithful close as others soared,

I was held in place. Leashed, one might say,

And circumspect, a vacation hemmed in
By the limitations of a declining constitution
And plunging mortality. I ruminate grimly
Among the strollers, flat-footed and benched.

But as I take in the three-ring circus —

A sandbox carefully drafted and sculpted
Into existence by a host of Imagineers,
I, like a near-sighted country pulpiteer,
Can’t quite grasp the stained-glass epiphanies,
But divine the carnie colors of the pulped revival.

From my perch I can radially behold
The fathers strapped into papooses, kids 
Darting ahead in wholesome happiness and criminal conniving,
Moms with maps, couples in matching mouse ears, young
Adults hidden in hothouse suits, scrambled I’m sure
By the relentless rays of the noonday sun, so much rodeo
Within my range, clowns and bulls and cowboys
And the motes of dust kicked up and settling,
Floating and whizzed around in turbulence, plunging
Irrationally, a perfectly chaotic vertigo…