What Will Carry Us Through by Bruce Gunther

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.

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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.