Wile E. Coyote's Lament

by Larry Fontenot

A drop of a thousand feet

and the canyon becomes

a coffin.

Nature's ability to swallow

everything whole

gives it power.

Poised at the top,

I have exhausted memory

searching for a charitable way out.

All I feel

are the best of times,

a simple loss

of a thousand

dreams

floating past

on the back of

Colorado breezes.

I have hiked and died

a thousand times

in this country.

All the things

I thought missing

I found in simple flowers

braced against the wind,

bushes

lodged in the lip of a cliff,

streams

rubbing up against muddy banks.

But even here,

among a solitude so forgiving,

something desperate calls,

and sometimes a drop

of a thousand feet seems like

only the next step forward.

About the Author:
Larry Fontenot was born in Louisiana and now lives in Sugar Land, Texas. He is a member of the Twitching Limes Ensemble, a local troupe of poets active in the Gulf Coast area. He has had poetry published in Arrowsmith, Chachalaca Poetry Review, Maverick Press, Maelstrom, The Melic Review, Moveo Angelus, Mystic River Review, Red River Review, RiverSedge, Snow Monkey, and Sulphur River Literary Review.

Copyright © 1998 by Larry Fontenot. The poem first appeared in Conspire, November 1998, and may not be reproduced in any form without the author's express written permission.