Wagon, Clock & Clown
by Jared Carter
[ poetry - march 06 ]
Wagon
Parked on a side street, under the box-elders, remarkably close to the center of town. A small wooden house, painted blue, supported by four wooden-spoked wheels with iron rims. The spokes are painted yellow. The wagon's two slender shafts point ahead in the street.
No mule, no horse grazing nearby, no sign of how this strange contraption came to be here. Its windows have curtains and flowerboxes. It might belong to a gypsy, a tinker, or a medicine show. In the twilight, in the last days of summer, this ancient wagon.
From within, music - the wheezing sway of a concertina. One of the songs we used to sing at camp. I can almost remember the words. A rusty lantern hangs beside the driver's seat. Within the lantern's perfect globe, a tiny yellow flame.
Clock
It is a Seth Thomas table clock manufactured in 1900. It has been in my family all of this time. Originally it was purchased by a great-great aunt when she was just starting out as a rural schoolteacher. She was a tiny little hunchback who never married.
She taught me how to read when I was five years old. I sat at a card table doing my sums and lessons. Sometimes she read aloud from a volume of Elbert Hubbard's Little Journeys to the Homes of English Authors. The clock chimed every quarter-hour.
Recently I had its works cleaned and oiled. Its pale silver dial is corroded from the touch of many fingers re-setting the hands. The dial resembles the face of the full moon seen on a cloudy night. The clock no longer keeps time but chimes occasionally, even now.
Clown
"Don't you recognize me?" the clown asked, coming alongside the carriage in which I was being conveyed. It was the town's annual parade, and I was the grand marshal, the guest of honor for the day. I continued to wave to the crowd and tip my hat.
A red smile had been painted across the clown's white face. "You loved me once," the clown said. "You took me down to the boathouse, under the willows. And then you went away, and I never saw you again." The voice was coming back to me now.
Ahead, the marching band struck up a stirring tune, and the driver of the carriage flicked the backs of the horses with his long whip. We were hurrying on toward the reviewing stand. "Wait, wait," the clown called. "It's not too late to turn back!"
