The New Trampoline

This poem was written in April, 1996 when the girls were little. I wanted to relate their joy and exuberance on the trampoline with the journey they were about to take.  It is also a reflection of differences between them.  Recently, I was touched by something Breanne told me about how magical her childhood had been; how she imagined a world of secret places around our backyard.  I always imagined our home to be too small and dull, but I should have trusted in the powers of a child's imagination to transmute the ordinary into the extraordinary.


The New Trampoline


Early Spring, between snows, we set up.
Stretched black skin between silver springs
Round eye to heaven, door and navel.
The elders hold the blanket corners.


The youngest daughter and her friend are first.
Tentative steps around the edges, then a timid bounce.
Giggling they gambol like newborn kids, hand in hand.
Each leaps higher, nearly airborne.


But the eldest daughter will lie spread eagle, alone,
Counting clouds in a cloudless sky.
Expanding upward to the edge of the earth
And beyond that blue bowl to the stars above.


I might give her a compass for that airy journey
I think, but remember, alas,
She must find her own way 
Beyond this gripping earth.
My silent task, at last, to break her falls
Again and again.








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