The Carousel of Happiness

for my kids, Joe & Emi

and for Scott Harrison

and the seasons they go round and round/

and the painted ponies go up and down/

we’re captive on the carousel of time/

– Joni Mitchell, The Circle Game

In Joe’s Colorado mountain meadow town,

Emi and I go to the Carousel of Happiness,

walking distance from his apartment,

“Walking Distance” also the name

of the Twilight Zone episode

with the carousel,

the man spinning back

twenty years ago or so,

to his old hometown

only to learn he can’t return,

the same lesson Joni sings

to her ladies of the canyon.

Emi and I enter

knowing nothing besides this

truth we’ve arrived at:

a Carousel of Happiness within

walking distance, must be

ridden at least once in a lifetime.

The cashier takes our $2 admission

and says “You don’t have to ride just yet,

take your time, look around.”

So we do, learning Scott Harrison,

19 in ‘67, a U.S. Marine machine-gunner

in Vietnam, had a music box his sister sent

that played Chopin’s “Tristesse” when wound.

The tinny plink of notes from the cylinder’s turning

teeth helped drown the sound of

war,

death,

desperation,

if only for a moment. Scott dreamt

of merry-go-rounds in mountain meadows

without mines, without machine-guns. Back stateside,

I found my heart needed work,

he said. Sculptures had no expectations,

he said. So he rescued a carousel, emptied of animals,

which had spun at the turn

of the century. Saltair Pavilion in Utah,

“Coney Island of the West.”

Its bones destined for scrap,

he hauled the carousel parts to Nederland,

Colorado, his mountain meadow,

two-and-a-half miles above sea level,

its whimsical name the perfect place for Scott

to spend decades carving joy from trauma,

making a menagerie of animals

that coexist without cages.

Scott sculpted so much peace, love, and yes, happiness

his tiny town turned out to build a home

that holds it, keeping the carousel and its creatures

safe from the whims of the weather.

Grateful our cashier encouraged a walkabout,

we’re finally ready to ride. We climb on,

Emi choosing a cheerful gorilla

who sits on a bench, his arm slung

protectively behind her. I ride

the giraffe, which oddly has a boa

constrictor wearing a straw boater

wrapped jauntily around its neck.

Emi and I turn as the perforated paper

winds through the 1913 Military Band

Wurlitzer, a beast of an instrument

joyfully pumping out a tune

I swear is CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising”

and I think Chopin wasn’t the

only music that got Scott through Vietnam.

When “Loco-Motion” comes on next,

the gears of my memory engage,

moving twenty years or so ago

to the time Joe and Emi were last

on a carousel. The Flying Horses

of Watch Hill, Rhode Island.

Joe grabbed the brass ring, winning

a wooden nickel good for another go-round,

but we got ice cream instead.

Strange to think those little kids,

my children, are now old enough to be the adult

in that Twilight Zone with the carousel.

If I remember the episode right,

the man goes back in time only to startle

his childhood self. The boy tumbles

from the painted pony, breaking his leg.

Suddenly, man and boy both earn

a lifelong limp, the man learning

a lesson the boy has yet to

forget - don’t let the past trap you - look up,

climb out, move on.

Joe has no limp to remember this truth,

just a back bent under granite slabs

he lifted, one by one, like

gravestones for a garden path

to grieve his father’s death.

For Emi, it’s her hands

that ache from the red

socks she knit for her father

to be cremated in.

My pain is a different animal

altogether. Which begs

the question: is pain self-imposed

penance for survival

or a ticket punched

toward healing?

The answer’s no matter

when the power

of centripetal force

is at play. So I release

this poem that lives

in my heart

to spin its way out

to you, yes,

you.