It’s kind of funny how the place I feel the greatest
semblance of hope for the future is
at the top of a cliff,
no cordons to
keep
me
from
falling,
ever worsening
slippage along
the edges
and the words of a poet carved into stone, moments before the narrative
plunges into stormy waters.
And yet here has always been glorious –
an arms wide open sensation, grasping the whole world between my fingers,
reaching for an untouchable sky, looking at the end of the world and seeing more, more, more
instead of a cold, hard blankness.
Here’s where the land rolls out in patchwork possibility, where the sea sparkles and dolphins leap from the waves like some kind of fantasy. Here’s where the sky is endless blue or bursting with sunlight, and the rain is falling somewhere else, far out at sea. Here’s the place of well walked traditions that never grow dull, the place of easy, endless daydreams. Here’s the place where I thought perhaps, I could tolerate this body.
This year, I walked it twice and on the final day, I paused
for a moment in the green and the blue and thought,
if I could stay here for a little longer, here in the slippage
of real and unreal, danger and safety, fantasy and possibility,
here on top of the world,
maybe I would believe that things still have the potential to change.