Todd Turner

The Juggler

Beneath the perpetual orbit
of spinning worlds, haphazardly
balanced upon the east-west

axis of a rocking plank,
a man juggles a quintet
of earth’s most principal form.

Five glittering orbs go up,
willing the onlookers awake
as the spun trajectory arcs

and cascades in a formula fit
for the confines of geometry,
or the mute notation of plotted

notes graphed in the minds
of those who map them out
across the horizontal lines of a stave.