encounter at otter point

Beneath unending skies misty sea horizons

edge across these moors along shaggy multicolor carpet

effulgent evergreens offering new growth in

joyful vigor seldom seen, chartreuses pregnant with promise

sprinkled with tiny brilliant blossoms in wild shades

Voluptuously reminiscent of the most mouthwatering exotic fruit:

berries, kumquat, pomegranate, mango, juicy tangerine.

I dare not name these wild &  newly flowering children,

most as unfamiliar to my eye as if they’ve fallen from

some keltic fairy kingdom, some distant outer planet,

or risen surreptitiously from the florid foamy  sea.

we  trample overgrown & fragrant paths along the breathless edge

overcome with pure elation and appreciation

Until my husband suddenly in a harsh shout wakens me—Watch out! You’re on

an overhang!—he yells, hands cupped

against the ocean’s nearby roar. I turn and see the giant golden sculpted cliffs,

streaked mud-red sandstone walls w oddly vertical layers rise

as if slung there by some ancient capricious continental drift—

denuded by El Nino and the endlessly relentless crash of waves—

a sandy clay where the most tenacious plant from heaven could  never root or grow

I’m standing on a path surrounded by bright blooms and evidently ready now to fall

unceremoniously  into the dizzying drop below, the vast expanse beneath unsupported

weight held up above eroded earth only by the sheerest land bridge made of weak and rootless silt
and shale  sand—all that from the pathway’s vantage point was hidden and invisible to me—

I quickly stride to safer perch to take the trail closer in, forsake the risky ledge.

But now we see another couple, these two with a little yapping dog beleashed

who ceremoniously take the trail we’ve just forsaken and with our arms and voices,

try to warn them—they seem annoyed.  As if we’ve trespassed in their reverie.

We point out the sheerness of the cliffs. “We know” the woman says a bit impatiently.

“this is otter point. Have you googled it? A fascinating history. We’re moving here.”

Get out! I scream and point. But just like me she cannot see. She shrugs and walks

Blithely blindly on, her husband at her tail along the twisting precarious trail.

Great, I defer cheerfully. and welcome to this orphaned land, all patrons and all matrons

Gratefully received—“Be safe! No accidents!” She flings a painted blonde hair
from her eyes w well manicured and diamond studded hand.

“We believe in abundance,” she calls from her suspended ledge,
smiling and appearing irritated both at once.  "NO VICTIMS!"

“we believe in only choices—it’s all energy!”

“OK, perhaps I need to hear that!” I hear myself say w/o credibility. I myself

lose altitude now, and faith and spirit.  We tramp back down the trail

in silence, wordless and  unaccompanied and heading back to the

Camper’s parking lot where our old blue grey mommyvan sits modest and serene

comfortingly familiar and alone except for a brand new Lincoln SUV

w chrome rack and rims, a relative behemoth beast, as  strangely odd and menacing
 in coldly gleaming pure white presence crouching here as some rare displaced,

perhaps endangered  polar bear.

That  woman by the way   -tho not near as old- was almost quite as large
and possibly as heavy as me.