Sometimes it’s just enough as you toe
the edge of a precipice.
Those are days when you put one word
in front of the other until you make it.
And by you, I mean me, the person learning
to accept life at its raw level – the hardened
cat turd on the basement steps, the smell
of a urinal disinfectant cake in an old man’s
bar, a smile filled with wine-stained teeth.
To take your hand after all these years as we
cross an ice-covered sidewalk like schoolchildren;
the children of our youth with purple popsicle mittens
in perfect contrast with the yellow of a school bus.
We can take many things for granted but not this:
our legs touching as we fall asleep, the contact
as light as a wren’s feather.
Bruce Gunther is a retired journalist and poet who lives in Michigan. He's a graduate of Central Michigan University and his poems have appeared in Sledgehammer Lit, Modern Haiku, the Loch Raven Review, The Dunes Review, and others.