There Is No Giving Up
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