Precipice

Owen Bullock

Precipice

 
 
Alone at the edge. What alone, what precipice. The ground beneath a slab, stair jutting out, space to breathe, fears to form, two hundred, three hundred feet, is it—fifteen enough to kill. The family back away, wander off. Confront silence. With their mother and visitors, safe, young legs sure (except that one moment on the pancakes). A falcon hovers into place above the bluff, shifts to reconnoitre, returns with ecstatic ease to the same vantage. Confront altitude. Try to think of this as a moment. A granite slab wedged beneath. Could fall. Any time. It sat for millennia. I’m 35. What could? Ask fears to leave but like any possessed they return to the headland with heath and hawthorn stumped.
 
 
 
 

Owen Bullock has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Canberra, where he teaches. He has published three collections  of poetry, four books of haiku, and a novella, the most recent being Work & Play (Recent Work Press, 2017). He has edited a number of journals and anthologies, including Poetry NZ. He is originally from Cornwall and lived for 25 years in Aotearoa/New Zealand before migrating to Australia.