REHABILITATION.

one summer

in the dark, rich heat of june

my brother told me;

if i put a grasshopper in a jar

for one day,

it would only jump that distance-

from glass floor to metal ceiling-

for the rest of its life.

thirty years later,

& i know this to be true.

trauma cuts the legs:

we expect an ending.

the life & height of the sky

become unimaginable.

the air will no longer hold us.

even so,

what else to do

but jump?

he told me in the car:

we have to go a long way out of the way

to come back the right way.

so somewhere, unseen & unknown,

i pray that summer we were wrong;

that the broken will leap over the moon,

that it is observation holding our cage in place.