Since first encountering it
in a set of self-paced
reading-enhancement lessons
imbedded in my fourth-grade
curriculum, I have disliked
the word precipice, perhaps
because it sounds kind of like
preciousness, both words that
speakers of robust Anglo-Saxon
frankly just don’t need, or
maybe because of some
unconscious fears of its
intellectual portents, its
unwelcome insinuation
that inhabiting a figurative precipice
might be as close to
living on the edge as
I will ever get, like playing
punk on the ’cello, not
that there’s anything
wrong with that.
Copyright 2016
T. Allen Culpepper
Poetry When It Comes 