(Also, I seem to be slipping into accidental alliteration. I shall have to be on guard ’gainst such a horrendous happenstance.)

My mind presents it as a mummery, silent but vivid as a votive. Gaily painted horses with solemn smiling faces rise into bulb-spangled heights or sink to the shadow-shaded depths. They circle, and while I am ambivalent toward the eventual arrival of my own time upon the wheel (rabbits not being particularly suited for horseback), the moment of decision never comes, for they circle without end.

They circle, and though it might just be my imagination (what else could it be, since the entire conception is of no more moment than the memory of a burst bubble), but the horses strain as they pass, stretch their mouths, wider and wider, and I wait for one to drop their bating bridle and speak a message that grows more urgent with each gyre.

Yet that moment, too, never comes, and they always appear on the cusp but never proceed to the consummation.

And so I wait. And while I wait, I while the while with wearisome wonderings. (what is the matter with me? Can one catch alliteration like a cold – a few days’ flu until it finally flees? Enough! If this is all my mind can manufacture, I shall silently watch the cincturing carousel.)

As it endlessly circles.