Homecoming

In the once-field by the quad
where I waded that Spring
in a plot of grass and girls with novels
to wait for Jean:
Corduroy and sandals

kicking clouds of grasshoppers,
I stopped to lie down at the edge
and floated on my stomach,
watching the hoppers;
their jaws ever-moving,
back and forward, forever

stripping the grass away.
From the twenty-fifth floor
I can see them all this morning,
glowing in a sea of window glass -

the girls, the books, me for Jean,

and the grasshoppers -
standing so close,
so consuming, and so clear

I could jump right through them.

Carl Bryant