|
|
Climbing the Wall (Free verse) by ecargo
To reach the bell,
I begin
navigating kinder-colored
plastic protrusions,
reaching, grasping, heaving, pulling up,
pushing off misshapen blocks,
gravity's fool fighting my pull,
my own weakness of muscle and will,
hands curled, crab clawed
and aching to gain each inch,
feet scrabbling, straining to stick
to the stucco, to grip--
but I slip,
belay my way
down
to the
ground.
This trick of undoing:
I, Spiderman, nimble,
sticky-handed,
a fact of my being,
superpowered
(rasping like an old engine)
up the wall by inches
and grimaces.
But my slippery foe,
Old Doubt, wins out,
and I let loose the false grasp
and lose the wall,
and again--again!--I fall.
Should I tell how I prevailed,
tolled my triumph at the top?
Or how I failed
and pathetically dropped?
Old Robert had it right:
reach, grasp
(gasp, drop).
Back to poem details
|