alison hicks
Bright Angel
Lights move all hours of summer nights toward the South Rim.
Hikers who’ve forgotten it takes twice as long to come up.
Easy to laugh at fools who don’t know when to turn around.
A canyon is the reverse of a mountain:
the hardest part comes last.
Having traveled far to get here, would you stop
this close to the river that made the journey through the same rocks
over more years than you can grasp?
Worth being a fool for, and how eager are you
to climb back to your life?
alison hicks
Alison Hicks was awarded the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Press for Knowing Is a Branching Trail. Previous collections are You Who Took the Boat Out and Kiss, a chapbook Falling Dreams, and a novella Love: A Story of Images. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Gargoyle, Permafrost, and Poet Lore. She was named a finalist for the 2021 Beullah Rose prize from Smartish Pace, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills Literary Lantern and Quartet Journal. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.