{"id":3908,"date":"2020-12-06T14:06:24","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T14:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=3908"},"modified":"2020-12-06T14:06:24","modified_gmt":"2020-12-06T14:06:24","slug":"lifes-circle-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=3908","title":{"rendered":"Life’s Circle Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TERRY MOSHER<\/p>\n

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TOP OF THE TOWN<\/strong> \u2013 Tom Rush in 1968 covered a song first sung by Joni Mitchell. It is haunting and brings me to near tears. You might not understand that. One has to be a certain age to get it.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u201c<\/em><\/strong>Yesterday a child came out to wonder
\nHe caught a dragonfly inside a jar
\nAnd fearful when the sky was full of thunders
\nAnd tearful at the falling of a star
\nAnd the seasons they go ’round and ’round
\nAnd the painted ponies go up and down
\nWere captive on the carousel of time
\nWe can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came
\nAnd go ’round and ’round in the circle game.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s true. I relate. My first seasons were in paradise, playing football as maple leafs fluttered to the ground against my older brothers in the side lawn of the house in southern New York State, playing tin-can hockey on thin ice on the pond just down the road as snowflakes gently fell, and hitting a ball in the nearby field, sliding into the rock that was second base as the brilliant sun hid an approaching dark cloud with thunder and lightning.<\/p>\n

Days wandering the foothills of the Alleghenies, scanning the clear horizon of small villages as a hawk circled and circled looking for something to grab and fly away and walking the dike with Peanuts, my loving dog, a mutt that didn\u2019t have a care in the world as long as she could come along.<\/p>\n

Soon the thunder would get louder, the black cloud darker as my roots were upended, my mother left for the paradise in the sky and I was dragged west protesting all the way.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThen the child moved ten times ’round the seasons
\nAnd skated over ten clear frozen streams
\nWords like, when you\u2019re older, must appease him
\nAnd promises of someday make his dreams
\nAnd sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
\nCartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
\nAnd they tell him : ‘Take your time, it won’t be long now’
\n‘Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down’
\nAnd the seasons they go ’round and ’round
\nThe painted ponies go up and down
\nWere captive on the carousel of time
\nWe can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came
\nAnd go ’round and ’round in the circle game.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Time stood still. Darkness moved in. Lonely walks along the tracks, deep dives into the forest where silence was deafening and the river roared its warning to stay away.<\/p>\n

Sad days, weeks, months and years stuck in a school unfriendly. \u00a0The only respite is morning shoot arounds in an empty and foul-smelling old cracker-box gym where the silence was more deafening, broken only by the sound of ball hitting the dusty floor.<\/p>\n

Slow walks home, 3 miles to darkness and then 3 more miles to more darkness in the early mornings. The only light burst from the up-right Zenith radio that spoke to me through the darkness of night and darkness of day. It gave me the only peace, the only love.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
\nThough his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
\nThere’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
\nBefore the last revolving year is through
\nAnd the seasons they go ’round and ’round
\nPainted ponies go up and down
\nWere captive on the carousel of time
\nWe can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came
\nAnd go ’round and ’round in the circle game
\nAnd go ’round and ’round
\nAnd go ’round and ’round in the circle game.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TERRY MOSHER     TOP OF THE TOWN \u2013 Tom Rush in 1968 covered a song first sung by Joni…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-column","category-mosher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3909,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3908\/revisions\/3909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}