Beachy Head (Poetry)

We missed them by a week.
Headlines named the three —
two on purpose, the child unwittingly
joined them in that leap.

The edge we crept near to
uneven and unfenced
made us giddy — height and fear
froze every living sense.

Just seven days before
we had taken photographs
of the cliff face and the shore
setting sun’s indifference

grasses growing to the brink
the tide returning fast —
we must have passed the very spot
the scene already cast.