Wrapped in enough rope
to start at one end of the blue world
and meet itself back at the beginning,
they kiss, break the tension
and maintain a perfect understanding
of intimacy and imagining what’s going on
in the other one’s eyes.

He’s the magician,
but she knows more about magic
than he could ever forget.

That’s part of the appeal.
That’s why they’ve been selling out
outdoor venue after outdoor venue.

They understand
electricity. Trading it back and forth
and knowing what the other is thinking
without the benefit of words or traditional poetry.

Down here on planet earth
we watch it unfold on TV screens
that are too big for religion and too impressive for our slowest schemes.

They land on the wing of a 747.
It’s okay. It’s all part of the show.
Don’t worry.

This is when they work their way
out of that big ball of rope. The whole length of it flying
into the air, but he catches it, gets the whole length
to consent to a miraculous tight-rope act in mid-air.

The rope holds and they leap off the wing
as though the wind has no say in the matter.

The next ten minutes is a flawless Astaire-Rogers
tribute. How they manage those moves
and that kind of trust under such conditions
is astonishing.

You don’t even realize
they’re descending until they’re about
a thousand feet above the ground.

That’s when their people down below
send up the car. Any vehicle will do. They land on the hood
and switch to dance that’s less like a ballet and more
like an hour after New Year’s when the balloons
look like headstones and the clamor has moved two blocks down.

The driver has been paid to assume
that everything will work out in the end.

No one knows
how that car returns to the streets
as though it had been there all along.

It’s a magic act.
You’re not supposed to know.

The route has been carefully planned out.
A full orchestra is lined up along the street,
playing while the fireworks succeed brilliantly
in adding to the momentum. Not overwhelming
or going off in its own direction.

It still comes off spontaneous.
It still feels as though it exists solely on belief.

They leap from that first car to another,
and then another, eventually breaking off
to swing from streetlight to streetlight
on opposite ends until they get to the big finish.

No one knows how they run up the side
of that big office building downtown, but they do it.
He leaps first to bring her in
for that kiss while his parachute opens.

They hold like that until they land center-stage.
Tens of thousands of people applaud
while they take a couple of modest bows.

It’s unbelievable
but sincere to a point
where it shouldn’t be so successful.

The silence during the car ride home
is as astonishing as the rest of it.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard