Backyard High Wire Act Ringling Brothers flying trapeze, Circe de Soleil, a granddaughter showing off gymnastic feats— all rhythms of life captured between held breaths. A performance this morning outside my kitchen window gave me pause: bare, slender branches, black, spindly outlines backed by December dawn light immersed in blue violet. First one squirrel racing with abandon up the tallest maple, past the nest distinguishable in silhouette against the burgeoning sky, and soon another close behind, and a third following the leader in agile leaps from fragile limb to limb, death-defying connections mysteriously maneuvered in spite of bobbing, bushy-tail weight. Once on a tour a guard shouted "silencio" nudging us on like cattle in the overcrowded Sistine Chapel where I craned my neck hungry to see a spark, to imagine the electric air Michelangelo left there between God's finger and Adam's. Now, as the day quickens and long after the squirrels disperse, gossamer limbs dance in the breeze, maple twigs reach to oak and somewhere, a sacred synaptic transaction.
Linda Vigen Phillips‘ poems have appeared in The Texas Review, The California Quarterly, NC Poetry Society Award Winning Poems 2001, Wellspring, Main Street Rag, Independence Boulevard, and Windhover. She has two published YA novels in verse, Crazy and Behind These Hands. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her husband.
Amethyst Review 