Catcher’s Grip
The grass was winter-colored beneath our feet
the ground was hard
your dreams had no season
so I let them become mine:
Somersaults and makeup and music
A faceless, nameless audience
holding its breath for you
the acrobat
the aerialist
the corporal poet
every stunt a metaphor
every routine rhymed
to the metronome of a trampoline
a spring floor
a bungee chord
A poet stutters and continues her performance
An acrobat stutters
We performed for the chain link fence
and the raspberry bushes
and the broken lattice under the porch
(tough crowd)
I grunted grey clouds
strained my muscles
my wire and sinew
my limbs in the air
You lifted me
hand to hand
over the winter-colored grass
over the hard ground
your back didn’t give
your arms held
I am older now
I am the faceless, nameless audience
holding my breath
as a merchant places your dream on a scale
and weighs out its price for his patrons
1 pair of empty hands
1 degree too short
1 misfired synapse
25 feet of free fall
2 vertebrae
He nods to himself
as if his finger weren’t on the scale
And you the corporal poet
I didn’t know could stutter
whose dream lies suspended in my mind
over the winter-colored grass
and the hard ground
you never dropped it
you never dropped me
