Cliffhanger

Oceanward sail the yachts and liners, a match stick flotilla in a green whirlpool bath seen from the dizzying height of the cliff top. Beside the lighthouse, ghostly echoes of crashing waves and wheeling gulls reverberate upwards from sand and rock. Scents of seaweed, bottle green surf, bracing, intoxicating, sailing on the stropped edge of a rainy needlepoint breeze. All the while black storm heads gather far and away on the distant horizon, whilst here stands I, sensory overload sparking in the fissures and cracks of my brain. The drop to the glassy black rocks beneath where white booming breakers smash and erode, little by little the coastline is eaten an inch or so each passing year. Fixed gazing at the raging cauldron as if answers to the unanswerable will rise to greet me, I lean and sway in magnetic salt winds held there in suspense...