A drop of a thousand feet
and the canyon becomes
a coffin.
Nature's ability to swallow
everything whole
gives it power.
Poised at the top,
I have exhausted memory
searching for a charitable way out.
All I feel
are the best of times,
a simple loss
of a thousand
dreams
floating past
on the back of
Colorado breezes.
I have hiked and died
a thousand times
in this country.
All the things
I thought missing
I found in simple flowers
braced against the wind,
bushes
lodged in the lip of a cliff,
streams
rubbing up against muddy banks.
But even here,
among a solitude so forgiving,
something desperate calls,
and sometimes a drop
of a thousand feet seems like
only the next step forward.
About the Author: Larry Fontenot was born in Louisiana and now lives in Sugar Land, Texas. He is a member of the Twitching Limes Ensemble, a local troupe of poets active in the Gulf Coast area. He has had poetry published in Arrowsmith, Chachalaca Poetry Review, Maverick Press, Maelstrom, The Melic Review, Moveo Angelus, Mystic River Review, Red River Review, RiverSedge, Snow Monkey, and Sulphur River Literary Review.
Copyright © 1998 by Larry Fontenot. The poem first appeared in Conspire, November 1998, and may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.