“Jump Ropes” for April 10, 2019

Jump Ropes

Where did they go?
They used to be everywhere
in good weather,
those wobbly parabolas.
 
Little girls, holding
one end in each hand,
twirled the ropes
into spinning doorways,
string lintels,
stepping over them,
rhythmically, lightly,
over and over,
carried by song.
 
The beat of the rope
against the hard ground
kept time for the breath
of the skipping girls.
 
Where did they go?
Into air?
Into the ground?
Into echoes
all around?
Into cadences
everywhere?
  
Leslie Schultz