Circus Act

by Devon Balwit

When a squirrel falls from a wire and springs 

unhurt from a patch of sawgrass, I’m as startled 

as the first time my Israeli student works  

her country’s name into an answer, and I have to  

write it on the board in front of my Saudis, 

whom I suspect know through the grapevine  

that I’m also a Jew. Down I plummet with the  

I-s-r-a-e, bouncing up with the final -l, unhurt, 

heart loud in my throat, the grammar lesson, 

simple present tense, functioning much 

as the torquing of the squirrel’s body,  

an aerodynamic spreading of my tail working 

to land us where we ought to land—he / she / it  

“s,” I / you / we / they no “s”—all of us  

continuing the mundane business of seeking,  

burying, or digging up—vulnerable  

but treating as commonplace 

our sudden vertigo and our will to survive.