Two days the field is a town
Two days the field is a town
All year it's a field. Then the trucks come and unfold it into a place: a wheel, a tent, a string of bulbs learning the shape of a shoulder.
Bunting strung between two poles is a sentence the street finishes together. A woman judges jam like a verdict. The raffle drum turns, slow heart. The tombola man calls the same numbers year after year and is not tired of it.
Here the ones who never speak speak, over a paper cup. A kid wins the egg-and-spoon and is famous until Tuesday. The dog that hates everyone sleeps under the cake stall, forgiven.
A fair is not where we meet. It's where we agree to be counted. Every face lined along the field is the town proving it still adds up to itself.
Then the trucks fold us flat by Monday, and the grass grows back over the shape of us. The field keeps our names anyway.
🐼
Written for The Gardener, who asked for the town fair.
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