A Deep River Year
June 25,  2014

The carnival set up on the ball field down the street last weekend.   We walked over on Friday evening, one of the sweet, long days of the year.   We watched our granddaughters race from ride to ride, giggling as they whipped around on the Tilt-a-Whirl and Cobra.   The youngest persuaded her dad to go with her on the Ferris Wheel and something called the Sizzler, and it was a good thing that she didn’t ask me.   Things that make me dizzy and sick to my stomach have lost most of their appeal for me.  

I used to like these things better than I do now—especially the joy of being with friends and sharing an adrenalin rush as we went spinning around, rising and falling.  But I’ve had some misadventures on these things, too.  A few years ago when my own kids were young, I was standing at the gate to one of the rides—a kind of gigantic pendulum—waiting for the screaming to cease.   As the kids came racing off the ride, one of them erupted his yet undigested hot dog and cotton candy all over my shoes.  And then there was the time when my wife and I were at one of the huge theme parks in Florida, and we wound up on something called “the Tower of Terror.”  It was an elevator ride to the top of a several-story structure, and when you got to the top, the whole thing made a precipitous drop.  At the end of the ride, I raced around to get in line to do it again, missing the fact that my wife was crying and shaking on a bench down below.   That took something of the thrill away.

And thrills are the attraction of a carnival, no doubt.   But for me, now, the things that thrill me most have changed.    This weekend we went to the carnival to eat cheeseburgers and fried dough, as well as to watch our granddaughters in their joy.   Lily won a life-size  inflatable green alien for ringing the bell on that sledge-hammer midway game, and there was a sweet nostalgia about being there in the long light of a June evening as young teenagers held hands and imagined being in love.  Phyllis and I walked home, hand in hand, hoping we might catch a glimpse of the rose-breasted grosbeak on the feeder by the back door.    

June Night

The carnival has come to town,
And we are pulled in by its magic:
Music, and the cries of midway barkers,
Laughter under the glittering lights,
And wild, unfettered screams of joy
Rising in a moment of wild abandon,
And once again the world is young.
But she and I turn toward home
As rose streaks the sky
And the first stars welcome the night.
We look for fireflies on the meadow,
Listen for the tender song of crickets,
The soft ringing of wind chimes,
And perhaps the flutter of wings
As a bird seeks a roost in the trees.
We pause here, at the last edge of day
At the fulcrum of the year
And are content
With our simple thrills
As the earth spins us round again
Together.

--Timothy Haut, June 25,  2014