Jumper

Tiny at the top of the tower,
a figure illuminated by light rippling in
the acetate folds of a boy’s letter
jacket won years before, a touch
soft enough for snowbirds, the news

said. Come down, I think, step careful
steps until it is maybe midnight, summer,
honeysuckle drafting up that stillness
where he was, where it is so calm
a man could blow whistles in his ear

and never hear a thing. The tower
looping its teenage lovesongs over America,
backbeat like a ball dribbling asphalt.
I watch him arrive, turn, catch
a moth like a blind pass, let it

flutter away, the soul unharmed.
Soft touch. Still I think: they will come
to me, the right words. I don’t see
the moth swallowed by the night,
its heart pumping up among the stars.