Lick Before You Leap

the irony of a treehouse, begging 
a mother hold the bones of her son,
begging feet leave the soft
green for sap,
needle and rough.

As a child, I climbed
high above the trampoline 
dreamed of leaping, lilting,
lifting to infinity or beyond.
Bounding like the moon landing or
number 23. With my tongue out, guaranteed.

How else might a writer show
the world their little wing?

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This was a strange little poem that started with a short teambuilding activity where each of us wrote a couplet based on two images and then we combined each of the lines together. The opening two lines of this poem were what I wrote for that occasion, and, after thinking about them for a bit, I decided to repurpose them for a new poem. Thanks for the prompt, Shawnee!

I’m working on compiling a small manuscript of poems (FROM THIS NEWSLETTER THANK YOU ALL!) that deal with attention and “seeing things anew”, largely as a result of the cross-country move that I’ve blabbed on about often in this newsletter. This poem touches on a lot of those themes: leaving the old house and a trampoline, Toy Story, the seemingly ubiquitous childhood dreams of being a star athlete or astronaut, etc. and the transition to wanting to be a writer. 

One of the first poems I wrote that I thought was any good (2013ish) also refers to the moon landing in its closing section (below). It’s interesting to see images recurring without intention:

Here’s a true story I
made up, afraid of 

insignificance:
I don’t believe the 
moon landing.

Thanks for reading.