circus day

Turkish women watch their children play
as they talk away the waning day.
Men unfurl the tent, its red and white
stripes speaking of a simpler age.

A boy, hat turned to its side, kicks a ball
up and down the left and right sides
of a mown park. The innocent clinks
of the hammers nailing pitons, spikes

into the moist turf, eight-foot poles with spikes
like spines supporting the scaly skin
of a maker of childhood fantasies, like dragons
shirtless men carry large loads.

Women shake their hips, suspending hula hoops
as kids cycle loops around the park.
The trucks, flatbed, stage their production,
a celebration of childhood memories.

An elderly man lunches in the shade
watching life progress as his waves
from the campers step strong men
who lug huge loads to and fro.

One of their husbands arrives, come from work
and sits amid the six women, legs akimbo,
joining his family in the afternoon
around tea time.

The circus family emerges from a camper,
the young children scampering down the makeshift
steps, as one young mother changes shifts with another
shouting an order to her man and chastising her young son

and her own lack of chastity, and as the afternoon
winds on they launch a motor revving.
One kid raises a red flag as her siblings run
about, a lone soccer ball between them.

The Turkish mothers, the German mothers --
all stay at home as the men go to work alone
or in groups for the laboring class,
trying to cover the costs of the burgeoning EU.