The generators thunder on

Churning up the air like a thick furrowed plough

Relentless in sound

 A backbone to the field

which tastes like gasoline

Rumbling the undergrowth

The size of home is the thickness of this noise

And the area with which they spread their hold

Engine meeting engine black grimed

young men with dreadlocks bunched up like tree stumps

 long hair and ripped t shirts covered in oil

Their bodies a song to the wanting of sweat

Attending to this music occasionally

With a tribe of dogs sniffing at their mud caked boots.

Id swing round and round and climb up the high notes

To the top of the rope

Then trapeze myself with twisted arm muscles

Refusing tears

Round the back of the truck

Clung on to the tree arms in the bondage of slip knots

Watching

The construction of yurts bent with willow

The ramshackle madness of their devotion to their girls

Turning and twisting down the ropes

Without hope of  audience

Just the persistence of turning

 a pirouhette

and when my arms were burning

id kick up my legs and let the rope take them

apart.

Somewhere skirted by the outside rim

Where the metal sidings of the Dodges were

Unique slack samples of a fashion in outside houses

Somewhere in there, pampered girls fed the dogs and carried babies in patchwork quilts

Round to the ‘ladies’ for gossip, tea and tarot spreads with bits of home made cake

Just the same as any other avenue

But I belonged to the trapeze bar I made out of polyprop rope and scaffold pipe

So heavy that once there was a rope of silk hanging in the park

And I glided right through its easy fall caught with the bounce of its design

It was so forgiving.

Till as cool as it was in the breeze on that bright and popular park teamed with trendy people gathered like hip style punters for a lark

The arc of practice on a clumsy swing in the trees was given to me for a minute

To me, this itchy skinned girl with a muddy face and aroma of woodsmoke and pissing without shower

From these students who didn’t know how to do it

sat idling the glory of having bought the thing instead.

So I stole it as far as i could work it and i skinned that cat

Stole it in the sunshine and the breeze at the tops of the highest tree in Hyde park in Leeds

With a jealous audience, pretending not to look

Where i was still no more at home than i am anywhere

just free with the wind

Lost on a site full of travellers from down t'road where ownership was everything and petrol cost.

Where the only name I knew was Persistence

And the reason to dance upside down

In the distance, on the edge.