Rose Mary Boehm
Circus in Town
They hadn’t thought of the parsonage.
Every cottage had been searched,
every house and apartment on High Street
had been suspect. Now and then there was
something to be said about small places
and the village greens, the gentle click
of bat on ball, the ladies making tea.
It had once been a quiet place of hushed voices
and whist parties. The vicar himself would
occasionally gain a few tricks, his wife
knew her place. When the storms came
they closed the shutters and listened
to the lashing rain, watched boughs break
off the chestnut trees on the green
ripping open the circus tent and
overturned three cages.
The tiger was found asleep in the baker’s
coal shed, the puma in the butcher’s pantry,
the snake wound her way to the parsonage.