Hold On

The Echo of What Remains Collected Poems of Wanda Lea Brayton

At the bottom of a shadowed gully,

there are stones enough 

to weigh your pockets down.

Resist their allure. 

They are not as desirous as you might think,

or the mountain would not have shunned them so,

shoving them into oblivion.

We all have cracks lurking beneath our surfaces - 

don't ever believe the propaganda that you're alone.

Nothing is unbearable - 

not death, not life,

not what hovers between.

There is no bravery, no heroism here - 

there is only necessity and those things which linger 

under conscious choices to take one step forward 

or two steps back, away from the precipice.

Hold on.

Someone is coming to lend you their trembling hand, 

to light this deep darkness with a single candle.

***

Author notes:

This poem was partly inspired by lines from the movie, "The Cheyenne Social Club" — 

Henry Fonda's character said to Jimmy Stewart's character: 

"I swear, you could be hangin' by your fingertips from the side of a cliff 

and call it 'climbin' a mountain'".