Taking a liberty again, I'm afraid, and slipping a poem (first draft of a major re-write) into Magpie Tales 103 that doesn't fit the prompt. Apologies to all zealots! It might pass muster for dVerse too. Does it count if I have a small group of Ponge translations awaiting final drafting?



HIGHWIRES

Holding the brown cowls, like honey jars
hot with bees, the linesman filled the wires
with words. We children gazed agog at this
free circus in the air, each one hanging
with him in the wind. When he clambered
hand over hand down the nailed-in steps
and stood four-square, sharing our patch
of grass, whistling as he packed a canvas bag,
he folded away his wings as well. Yet when
the ‘phone bubbled into the stilted prose
of a Sunday afternoon, I swung with him
and his humming once again, hanging from those
singing wires just beneath the invisible stars.