Fairground In A Summer Blackout
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Grace Bell, Grade 11
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Poetry
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2009
A blackout
Makes the peninsula darken
And lack of power
On a scorching day
Means no cooling
No ice-cream
No carnival by the beach
And after moping about
And finding ice-cream
Power returns
And we make our way
Hopefully
Back to the carnival
But it is different from how I remember
And the rides are not all the same
And a dark undercurrent
Makes everything slightly askew
And the rides seem too fast
And safety seems lax
With no pre-ride warnings
About hands inside cars
Or not leaving mid-ride
As if after the blackout
Everyone wants to go home
And not run the rides at all
The darkness falling
Does nothing
To quell my unease
And after my second ride
I pass off other more dangerous rides
In favour of the huge skywheel
Which seems to be a safer option
And we take water and chocolate with us
In case the power goes down again
While we are in mid-flight
Our ride passes without incident
And we spend some time playing games
But the atmosphere wasn’t the same
Since the blackout
Or last summer