Building the Trampoline

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BUILDING THE TRAMPOLINE


may require a retired neighbor 

to hold one side while you fit together

the other. It may mean, in the last light

stretched tight across September sky, 

time itself unwinds and refills 

the neighbor’s knees with cartilage. 


There’s no safety net to protect from tumbling  

headlong into joy. No one yet 

has pocketed the round laugh of the moon, 

but there are ways of getting closer. 


And when your daughter, or maybe

the neighbor’s daughter, three

again—remember, time is kicking it's feet,

suspended—comes out in her PJ’s

to try it for the first time, unable

to stand straight from laughter, 


you may feel something inside you

spring with a sudden up-

take of breath, more than your stomach

lifting on the wind of an unhinged hope 

that there may yet come a day 

we’re double-bounced so high


we never have to fall back down.


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