A Fantasy and Fact

Marion Strobel

Your love is self-assured and poses.
The whiskered seals perform a shadow act:
Juggle upon their satin noses
A fantasy and fact.

I watch your love upright in spangles
Bounce to the horses' gait, invert and swing
Under their bellies, painting angles
Around the tanbark ring.

It is the danger that malingers:
The cardboard cannon that the clown has fired;
The platform spotlighted for danger
Caught where the ceiling's wired:

Now that the arcs swing slower, smaller,
And feats that shook the horizontal lines
Have lost, with closing parasols, their color,
Only this platform shines

Where now the girl awaits the starter,
Young as your love is, fearlessly alive,
Takes, at a glance, the patch of water-
Death, or a perfect dive.