"On the Edge"

It’s too late to intervene.
You look so clean-cut in your seersucker suit,
your argyle socks, your thin gold watch.
You look so debonair, so fair, in the rare air
at the tip of the cliff, where wind whiffles your pantlegs,
invades your short hair, curling it back from your face.
Such clear skin, close-shaved dark beard in pale cheeks
and firm chin, bright blue eyes, thick black eyebrows.
One seagull cries, hovering – you glance at him, his gray wings, dingy white breast,
his squawk is nearly soundless as the gusts whip up from the waves, carry off his vowel screams.
You lean forward, cup one blunt hand against the buffeting wind, catch a tingling of sea mist spewed from the crash of waves.
Arms of wind reach inside your jacket, fingers caressing your back.
Another feather of wind seeks up your pantlegs, tickling your shins, knees, thighs.
You lean further into the wind, let it buoy you up, let it tenderly rescue you from gravity,
from the beckoning wave gestures, the seductive kiss of foam, the seaweed with arms to hug holding tight a rock.
It’s too late for fate to save you now should the loving wind recant and slip away, allow you to fall.
You spread wide your arms and still the wind licks your stomach, clambers over your shoulders, brushes your hair,
holds you so gently on this cliff
so gently high above the edge of the sea.
Now lifts, now lifts you, and you hover like a seersucker seagull.
Only the wind hears your vowel shout.