Backyard

The sky hugs the ground here
close, with no exceptions.
It is open and split wide
to all corners within range of my eye.

I imagine all the times I felt
trapped here, in a glass jar
like a tarantula in a terrarium
given an allotment of the habitual nature
it is used to.

I remember the times that
combines roared in my backyard
and I shut the doors to the intruder
like it was a lion,

the times the air I breathed
smelled like cow dung and hay
and I had contempt for those who
worked their hands
and not their brains.

But the yard was a three-acre patch
where no building had ever stood.
My feet were one of the few
out of billions
to connect to the ground here,
and jump,
as if the packed soil was a springboard.