•

When the waitress takes us for a couple
he turns to face me, gracious
with talk about the weather, our first sun:
last week, just north of here
they'd been shut down by wind,
then wakened to deep snow.
He's with the carnival, he says,
pointing across the street
where a long-armed Octopus
flings two pre-teens against clear April sky.

One boy on the kiddie train,
one mother, waiting.
Yes, in this town, he's noticed,
folks stay home Sundays.
They'll have to fold up.
Then, as if we've shared a supper table
all these years, he adds,
"We've had a real hard spring."

I nod, remembering
another season
my own boy running wild
at 2 a.m.,
alive, alert
dismantling these rides for pay—
the way I pulled him back
into the car, into the house
his father's arm around his thinning shoulders:
eat, son, eat, then rest,
school starts on Monday—
the way he smiled and even
swallowed a few bites
though already he lived without eating—
the ringing phone, a jagged-toothed alarm
to summon him from Sunday—
how his father, defied,
threw up his hands:
If you leave now—
my own arms locked around his waist
the steep pitch toward the street
those first light drops of rain . . .

Quiet now, we lean against the counter,
refugees in washed-out jeans
married by hunger, and too weary by far
to quarrel over money
or the kids,
the Ferris wheel revolving empty
until our food arrives, twin warm brown paper bags.