David Pedlow
Losing It
Resting part way down the cliff –
the single rope from which you swung,
taught, vibrating with your weight
against the rough rock face;
the addled eggs your target,
twenty feet below, beneath
the sharp edged ledge
on which the line would saw –
you failed.
That moment, looking down,
your mind was filled
with images of fraying rope,
a scrabbling backwards topple
and the final plunge,
screaming, into the foliage
a hundred feet below.
Panicked by these images of instant death,
you did not pause to look
beyond that moment
to the distant years
of mindless, blind incontinence,
that await the gentle fraying
of the neurons in your brain.
“I’m coming up,” you called.
But in the climb to safety had to dodge
the falling, shattered rocks
of your philosophy.
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- Second Aeon
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- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
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- Yellow Crane, The