There Is No Giving Up

Terry Cunningham

 

 

Waiting,

waiting for that door to open

beside others in suits,

scribbling on applications.

 

Their youthful faces

never slipped backward

over my cliff,

anvil tied to an ankle,

exchanging blank looks with the coyote,

to pass him,

and smack rock bottom,

mushrooming a cloud of dirt. 

           

Once at the top again,

they never caught their breath,

before a  weakness dissolved,

the ground

down. 

 

For years,

their bloody fingernails

never embedded in rock,

inching higher

toward that next career.

     


Terry Cunningham lives in Noblesville, Indiana.  Terry’s poems have appeared in previous issues of the Tipton Poetry Journal and the recent issue of Flying Island.   Next January more of his poems will appear in Twisted Dreams.

  

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