A Sonnet on Cliffs

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

Henry Ford, American Industrialist

. . .

It’s in peeking from a peak, precarious,

That enraptured one becomes, by beauty various.

Beauty however, is an ugly thing,

Consider life, its beauty destroyed by death’s sting.

We cling on to cliffs of expectation,

Expecting that our grasp guarantees glee and elation.

The unexpected slip of our rigid grip, however, downs our elevated souls;

Depletes our spirited spirits; sinks us, whole.

Such slips from cliffs, do us provide,

With a choice, challenging: Climb or Hide.

To choose the latter would mean we lose ground,

And our potential forgetting, cease to become a person profound.

To choose the former would mean, our zenith we pursue,

Surmounting the cliff of expectation thus becomes, duly due.

. . .

~ Granville D. Austin