Each night, this adroit young lady

Lies among sheets

Shredded fine as snowflakes

Until dream takes her body

From bed to strict tryouts

In tightrope acrobatics.

Nightly she balances

Cat-clever on perilous wire

In a gigantic hall,

Footing her delicate dances

To whipcrack and roar

Which speak her maestro's will.

Gilded, coming correct

Across that sultry air,

She steps, halts, hung

In dead center of her act

As great weights drop all about her

And commence to swing.

Lessoned thus, the girl

Parries the lunge and menace

Of every pendulum;

By deft duck and twirl

She draws applause; bright harness

Bites keen into each brave limb

Then, this tough stint done, she curtsies

And serenely plummets down

To traverse glass floor

And get safe home; but, turning with trained eyes,

Tiger-tamer and grinning clown

Squat, bowling black balls at her.

Tall trucks roll in

With a thunder like lions; all aims

And lumbering moves

To trap this outrageous nimble queen

And shatter to atoms

Her nine so slippery lives.

Sighting the stratagem

Of black weight, black ball, black truck,

With a last artful dodge she leaps

Through hoop of that hazardous dream

To sit up stark awake

As the loud alarmclock stops.

Now as penalty for her skill,

By day she must walk in dread

Steel gauntlets of traffic, terror-struck

Lest, out of spite, the whole

Elaborate scaffold of sky overhead

Fall racketing finale on her luck.