The Circus By Kayla Hall

A child asks, "What is the grass?" Green, stringy
and it lands softly on the dirt below.
What more could something plain and simple be?
It could be nothing more, it is just grass.
Something I can lay on as the world spins
around me, or I roll down a steep hill
and now I am the one who spins wildly
out of control. My mind races, the ground,
the sky, the ground ; my mind can not focus.

Earth shifts trembling beneath my dainty feet
shaking me from asking pointless questions.
I have never felt an earthquake before.

I do remember all the drills from school;
crawl under a desk, arms, legs and head in.
Protect your head from shattered glass falling.
The intercom would rumble with fake sounds
of the ground shaking and buildings crumbling.
This was no drill, sounds like a jackhammer,
maybe it was just a loud jackhammer.

The ground breaks away, grass weaves into rope.
Like walking a tight rope I had to pick
how I stepped with luck. Carefully I thought.
No safety net for my last performance.
The circus clowns had already gone on,
tigers and elephants too. All the eyes
were on me, the last act of the evening.

"What is grass?" my inner child questions me.
I replied, "it is something to comfort
you so when you fall it is not so bad."