Leaping Poem by gershon hepner

If in the morning you can’t leap,
perhaps you should go back to sleep.
If in the afternoon you can’t,
it means you’ve been too nonchalant
about the leaps you should take then,
those of imagination. Men,
and women also, whose imag-
ination doesn’t leap should catch
a lot more sleep, when they should try
to dream of being very high.
It’s best to do this in the night,
but afternoons may be all right,
far better than the evenings, when
you should be sober until ten.
I’ve found it really isn’t hard,
thanks not to Soren Kierkegaard,
but to the woman with whom I
both sleep and dream, and sometimes fly.

Inspired by a poem by Kay Ryan, in “Flamingo Watching”:

APOLOGY

I thought you were
born to privilege,
some inherited advantage ––
like an estate framed
in privet hedge,
or a better-feathered
shuttlecock for badinage,
or other French pretensions.
I never thought you knew about exhaustion ––
How we have to leap in the morning
As early as high as possible,
We are so fastened, we are so dutiful.

12/10/08