Trying Not To Look Down
(Message In A Bottle)

My fingers bleed 
From the futility of this struggle
Scaling canyons with vertical walls
With nothing but my hands;
At the top of this precipice 
There looms yet another,
And I — I am stuck here
The trail behind has crumbled away,
Ahead seems impassable

I cast my hopes to the sea below
Like a message in a bottle
Floating indiscriminately 
On a path to nowhere,
Without hope of finding land,
My plea for deliverance rolled
Like some long forgotten parchment
Locked inside its transparent tomb

It becomes but a speck on the horizon
And I, to it, a mere spider 
Clinging to the wall
My grip slipping against     
Gale force winds buffeting my back
And the fall threatens to be long,
Hard, and lonely.
I try not to look down. 



Janet Reid
march 2008




Awarded by Poetic Constellations





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Awarded by Muse Mongers Motel ~ Sasha