Children of the Carnival

In the night—
        like rats
—they come out of their hiding spaces.
They scuttle across the fields,
folded into the shadows between the grasses.
They walk heel-to-toe,
        silencing even their footsteps,
their breath beneath the crickets’ song.

In the day they are passersby;
you see them in the shadows,
darting behind flaps
        and stopping
only long enough to slip soiled hands into your pockets.

If you look beneath the whispering clouds,
        in the shadow where the tents
        meet the arching grasses,
you will see them.
Like a forgotten cord,
they trail behind the caravans,
        these children of the night.
They own just what they can carry,
living out of bags
        and off of nothing,
moving with the wind.