The tiniest thing can make a poem,
I say, when people ask where they
come from—

like the grasshopper who inadvertently
hitched a ride on my windshield
on the drive home after a massage,

stiffening my shoulders with concern
for its welfare. Should I pull over
and find it a grassy spot to live

out the rest of its days, which,
surely, at this time of year—even
on an 86-degree October afternoon—

are numbered? Can I gently
cup it in my hands to transfer
it safely, to do so without harm?

In meaning to extend a kindness,
our actions often yield the opposite,
however unintended,

like the grasshopper scrambling
for purchase on the glassy surface,
and, as I debated, disappearing

in a whoosh. So I drove on, wishing
I’d handled things differently, helped
this one or that one or the other one

touch down in a soft landing place
when we find ourselves where we
don’t want to be—amid so much

turbulence, so much uncertainty
in the rough and tumble frenzy of this
bewildering world.