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Wednesday, August 26, 2009

END OF A ROPE

by Daniel Wilcox


Last week in stark finality,
A reality TV star of us all,
Wanted by the cops,
Hanged himself
In despair or regret
At the end of a rope,
So unreal in the darkened motel
In Hope B.C.

What an oxymoron of factual news,
A final exit show in
This small fairytale town
Below snow-capped peaks
And evergreen, cliff-ledged majesty
By the River Fraser rolling past time;

Strangely last Fall,
I, too, clung at the end of a lifeline in
A brightly lit motel down that same road,
But now I thrive in this troubled life
Far from the ledge of loss
Because last year when peering
Into the bottomless abyss,
I took a leap across
Despair
To the ageless Rock,
There in Hope, A.D.


Daniel Wilcox, a former activist, teacher, and wanderer--from Montana to Hope, B.C.--casts his lines out upon the world's turbulent waters and wide shores in Counterexample Poetics, Moria, Frame Lines, Full of Crow, Centrifugal Eye, etc. His first book of poetry, Dark Energy, was published in July of 2009 by Diminuendo Press.
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