Gratitude
By Andrea Cohen
after Agnes Martin
How fortunate, having
fallen, to fall in
with a ladder
made of light.
How inviting
ideas are: climbing
into bigger, into
better bright. I
tried and tried,
but couldn't, on
two rungs, hold
fast. Panicked, I
was, until recalling
the Alpinist slipped
inside a crevasse,
a man, who, frostbit,
exhausted, unable
to climb up, willed
himself to slip
down more. One
goes, sometimes,
that deep into an icy
self and finds therein
an eyelet of light, an
opening, and ghost-
like, from some
ancient glacier stumbles.
Copyright Credit: Andrea Cohen, "Gratitude" from Everything. Copyright © 2021 by Andrea Cohen. Reprinted by permission of Four Way Books, www.fourwaybooks.com.
Source: Everything (Four Way Books, 2021)