Grasshopper
It's funny when the mind thinks about the psyche, as if a grasshopper could ponder a helicopter. It's a bad idea to fall asleep while flying a helicopter: when you wake up, the helicopter is gone and you are too, left behind in a dream, and there is no way to catch up, for catching up doesn't figure in the scheme of things. You are who you are, right now, and the mind is so scared it closes its eyes and then forgets it has eyes and the grasshopper, the one that thinks you're a helicopter, leaps onto your back! He is a brave little grasshopper and he never sleeps for the poem he writes is the act of always being awake, better than anything you could ever write or do. Then he springs away.
Copyright © 2011 by Ron Padgett. Reprinted from How Long with the permission of Coffee House Press.