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Eating Cream Puffs at the Police Station
Thomas R. Smith

In memory of Cris Higgin

In late afternoon the best shade near
the cream puff stand is found on benches
outside the Arthur R. Blakely Jr.
Police Station at the State Fair. We suck
whipped cream from the eggy pastry halves
as if ambrosial oysters from the shell.
Powdered sugar sifts down on our clothes,
the cream so good we lick the paper
wrapper clean, unself-consciously since
other cream puff pilgrims on these benches
are doing the same. We watch in amusement
as the Fair police force assemble for
their annual group photo, one burly shaven-
headed cop in a bullet-proof vest
in back standing on tiptoes to be
seen above the blue-clad ranks. Now
the sun is far enough west to backlight,
show people and things in what I
fancy to be their eternal aspect.
This goldenness behind us, around us,
isn’t this what we’re truly made of, star-
stuff, the dust of suns? At least twenty times
today I’ve noticed one woman or another
of a certain age, attitude or hair color
bringing to mind our friend Cris who shocked us
with the suddennes of her leaving less than
two weeks ago. Cris, what are we doing here now that
you’ve moved on? The everyday-ridiculous
answer is—get ready for a laugh in your
afterworld—eating cream puffs at the police
station. Now here on a late summer
afternoon, made somehow more dream-like
and luxurious by a temperate breeze,
I observe the endless mortal procession,
so many faces and bodies, so many
appetites and fates, all suddenly struck
with glory, these fairgrounds a micro-
cosm of the world both witnessed and eased
by a sense of the complete and utter
privilege of being here, both the little here
that is the Fair and the larger here
that is the here of being anywhere at all.

—
Thomas R. Smith is a poet and teacher living in western Wisconsin. His most recent books are a poetry collection, Medicine Year (Paris Morning Publications) and a prose work, Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (Red Dragonfly Press).

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