I remember a clown who had his eye
blown out by flashlight powder
some 65 years ago in a library in Iowa.

A seasoned observer had done him in,
told his forgotten tale, lodged in her
memory and journal, a tale
as old as my memory of her telling.

I told the story of the poor clown
to some kids in a poetry class
I was taking to enrich my retirement.

They sat and watched
the images twirl in time:
blue powder, red blood,
the laugh of the crowd,

the stumbling clown,
finishing his act,
staggering out the door into the dark,
the whistling and stomping drowned out
by the throbbing in his skull.

A young woman
had seen the story in a newspaper,
cut out the article,
read it again,
and wrote a poem in her journal
which she read to me
in a library in Iowa.

I finished my tale
and looked at my classmates.
I wondered if they, too,
forty or fifty or sixty years hence,
would sit in a class and tell the tale
to another group, like they themselves.

- Bob Miller