Losing them, fixing them, forgetting to put them in
Subscribe and Save up to 45%
If we were both hanging from a cliff by one hand you’d tell me how scary it was to be hanging from a cliff by one hand and we’d talk about how it made you feel and how your hand hurt and how the sun was setting. I’d be wondering how long I could endure and we’d talk about how long you thought you could endure and then you’d tell me everything you’d learned about enduring as long as you had. I’d listen and watch night fall until you suddenly noticed me hanging and praised my heroic endurance and said how ashamed you felt to have talked so long when I was suffering too. I’d say that’s OK and you’d say it wasn’t and I’d say OK it wasn’t and you’d laugh and we’d both be silent hanging in the dark. Then just when I’d think I could not hold on another moment you’d find a ledge to put your feet on and I don’t know how but you’d help me find it too. We’d let ourselves down together and sit safely on the ledge under the stars dangling our legs.
David Allan Cates
I laughed out loud at David Allan Cates’s poem “On a Cliff with You” [March 2014]. I showed it to a friend, who snapped a photo of the poem with his phone and sent it to his girlfriend. She texted back that, if she hadn’t been in a crowded coffeehouse, she would have wept.