She stands high on a ridge, arms raised above head
the moon just past zenith, the start of set.
She steps closer to cliff edge, extends one foot out
swings it back then forth, spreads her arms as wings.
She becomes all four directions
balanced on a leg broken in a prior fall.
Temperatures drop. Flakes of snow drift down.
She controls the rhythm of time
a counterpoint for a pendulum on the clock.
By morning she will be the sun rising over plains.
Kyle Laws is based out of the Arts Alliance Studios Community in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.
© 2020, Kyle Laws
Halfway Down the Stairs 