Remember the upswing, the peak of the swing
from the catalpa tree where your stomach paused
in perfect equilibrium
between thrust and gravity? To get that far and hold it
all around the world, to orbit like the Russians!
In retrospect: to keep being ten, before,
well, you know
what followed, what junior high was like: the cold mornings
when your little Silvertone clock radio clicked on
a moon in the still-dark sky you had to enter,
both feet
on the cold floor, one foci of the day’s ellipse,
of the fancy bluffing you practiced how to do
out there, the other you still holding on,
cold feet slightly
turned out, a hard little bow of feet. The world
split into here and there. Remember, too,
your Vassarette training bra, your awful
tantrum, the way
you threw it across the room after one day’s
straitjacketing? How loose the Russians had gotten,
you thought, how lifted, how barely held
on America’s string!
How definitely you would rather be Red than Dead.