Dive

1.

Orange light scrubs

the cliff's blunt peak.

My shadow stretches

across the rim, plunges

deep into the heaving sea.

Waves wash against

egg-shaped boulders,

pitted by nature’s

pestering. I shall not

dive, for I must live.

Vertigo seduces like a femme fatale.

Dizziness at the abyss

of freedom. Choose now,

and all will be sealed. Hesitate,

and your fate's still fixed.

2.

Angst whitewashes the cost

of falling, the fear of nothing,

nothing to fear. Gulls trip

on the rocky beach, peck

for pebbled canapes.

I peer wall-eyed at the sun,

betting against blindness.

The horizon limns a mesa in pink,

blurred ridge of promise, bricking in

the infinite. Look again: flat black sky.

Purple seas serve no one. I seek

a brighter tide at dusk. Slip knots

lasso crabs. Shellfish cling to drenched

basalt. An opaque light streams above.

Woozy, I inch forward. Wings break my fall.