Trapeze
By: Deborah Digges
See how the first dark takes the city in its arms
and carries it into what yesterday we called the future.
O, the dying are such acrobats.
Here you must take a boat from one day to the next,
or clutch the girders of the bridge, hand over hand.
But they are sailing like a pendulum between eternity and evening,
diving, recovering, balancing the air.
Who can tell at this hour seabirds from starlings,
wind from revolving doors or currents off the river.
Some are as children on swings pumping higher and higher.
Don't call them back, don't call them in for supper.
See, they leave scuff marks like jet trails on the sky.
Digges is not only a poet, but she is also an author of numerous books, and two memoirs. She won a Kingsley Tufts Prize, and a Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize. She is known for having poems that often rely on the relationship between humans and nature, the primitive urges of discovery and rediscovery, and the physical consequences of such momentary losses of the self.
This poem gives me amazing imagery from the first line. It gives me the feeling as if i;m walking on the trapeze in the circus. I love how this poem makes me think. I can feel my hands slipping and adreniline russing through my veins. I believe this is one of my most favorite poems I have ever read.
