She Moved Through The Fair

1.
All weekend sharp-faced old Jacqueline
sat way back in her deep dark porch
and watched her grandson park cars on her lawn

for those coming to the big fair,
helping her to pile up the money she lives on all year
in her firetrap near mansion

where the windsock in the colors of the Irish flag
hangs straight up and down, motionless,
from the pole on the post at the ratty porch stairway.

2.
A leather-skinned couple
bickered lightly by a booth
selling straw cowboy hats.

“Whatya want with that –
you ever ride a horse in yer life?”
”No, but I’ve ridden my man plenty.”

I passed by too quickly
to hear all that followed that,
but it started with smoker’s laughter.

3.
Packs of teenagers — is that the right
collective noun? are they ever anything
but a collective noun? — roamed the midway:

4-H T-shirts
and blue hair;
cowboy hats,
(Connecticut cowboys, again!)
cowboy boots.

Unmistakable: the ones made up
of couples in first sexual union
could not let go of each other long enough
to put sugar and syrup on, let alone eat,
their shared funnel cakes.

4.
The cigar in the face
of the woman tending the shooting
at the midway game
never moved the whole time
she was spieling the skeptical
passers-by.

5.
If the nymph
described in that old song
was ever at this fair

it was not tonight –
I did not see her
among the jostling throngs.

Perhaps the song was written
about sharp faced Jacqueline
as she once was,

and her yard full of cars
is the sequel?  ”They moved
to the fair.”  Or maybe

any woman can be a song
with the right cowboy hat
and the right eyes to see her.