Building the Trampoline—Luke Harvey

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by Luke Harvey

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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Luke Harvey lives with his wife and two daughters in Chickamauga, GA, at their home, Oak Haven. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Spiritus, The Christian Century, The North American Anglican, Delta Poetry Review, and elsewhere. His first collection, Let’s Call it Home, was published by Cascade Books in the Poiema Poetry Series. ​Luke works primarily as a high school English teacher, but also runs the Oak Haven Writing Workshops.

This poem was excerpted from Let’s Call It Home by Luke Harvey.

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