Here is the fourth poem from Ocean Saga
From the Clifftop
Up on the cliff’s top edge? Try looking down.
Height drags and pulls. You could fall.
Ever felt that urge to stand on the brink then plummet?
Go on, experience that once in a lifetime thrill.
You could be killed.
“No, too risky. The wind could be frisky,
push you sideways, turn you endways,
grab and smash you down to the shore.
Drop you in a crumpled heap there, all gore.
Still alive, but completely floored.”
So cry for help! Or crawl to safety?
“Stuck stranded on the tide line more likely:
laid out like a fillet of fish,
bones displaced, picked clean by gulls.
Imagine them pecking at your face,
squabbling over who gets the eyes.”
Last sight plastic waste, a fisherman’s line,
all caught up in seaweed rotting.
Then a blood-orange tipped beak,
gobbling up your precious orbs like caviar
downed without champagne.
“All for daring to go on the clifftop.
Think I’ll just stand back, thank you.
Take in the air, enjoy the view,
keep my feet on the ground,
firmly glued.”
Your hesitation is perfectly understandable.
Although - what is that over there?
The view beyond land’s end is so enticing.
See the boat with a girl upon its prow?
A fisherman’s rig painted opalescent green,
with a cargo precious as pearl.
She is coming ashore.
The little family by the beach huts look up.
Earlier there were tears and talk of rescue,
until deeper fears subdued them into silence.
On the beach since then, they have been waiting.
The man perched on the cliff-edge high above
is waving, but not to them.
No, he hails his elder daughter,
missing since morning but now
racing in like the tide,
surfboard by her side.
“Daddy,” the picnickers shout, “is Salacia returned?”
He peers down at them. He does not fall.
His feet are firmly planted. He stands tall.
“Yes, she’s safely back,” he says.
“A fisherman helped save her life.
Thank you, from us all.”
So Simon says,
“Neptune cannot make her his bride,
unless she races the outgoing tide
one more time.
Do you think she will?”
He cannot speak.
He will not jump,
despite hearing the call.
He will welcome home his daughter,
tho’ her faraway look
will keep them apart, build a wall.
“You won’t understand” she says
she has glimpsed a better world.
“I am taking hold of,
not taking, my own life
when I join Neptune
as his wife.
Grown-ups need to take the plunge too.”
And the sea, always the sea,
bathing you and me
with its abundance of life.
We must protect the ocean:
Neptune will keep its secrets from us
until it is freed from human strife.
