Barrels

The Poem

The universe aligned for two seconds.The barrel is not a wave, not a ride,not an achievement to be checked offand discussed at the beach bar after —it is the two seconds the universe decides to show youwhat it’s made of from the inside,to let you stand in the cathedral of the thingthat was going to happen whether you were there or not —and you were there. You were exactly there.That is the whole of what it asked.That is the whole of what you gave.

The wave is made of light.Look at it —the thousand triangles of green and teal and goldthat are also the wave and also the truth of the wave,what the wave actually iswhen you stop calling it waterand start calling it what the person inside it knows it to be:

The thousand triangles

a cathedral, a clock, a two-second prayer the universe offers once —and you either catch it or you don’t,and if you catch ityou will spend the rest of your life returning to the waterto be offered it againbecause you know now what it containsand you cannot unknow itand you would not if you could.

He is calm.The specific stillness at the center of the impossible thing —the way two seconds expand to contain everything,the whole life, every morning you came and it wasn’t ready,every wave that closed out or passed wide or came too late —all of it in the barrel, contained, redeemed,made into the necessary price of this,of being here,of standing calm at the center of the cathedralwhile the universe does what it doesand you ride it.

Calm at the center

I have been in a barrel.It lasts a lifetime.The two seconds and the lifetime are the same thing inside the barrel —which is the barrel’s whole argument,which is why the surfers come back,which is why you come back —not for the wave, for the two seconds that contain the lifetime,for the moment the universe aligned and you were thereand the water closed over your headin its geometric cathedral of green and goldand for the duration of the impossible you were inside it —held, specific, completely presentin the two seconds that will last forever.

Every morning at the water. Every session.Every wave that wasn’t the one.All of it the life you are livingin order to be present for the two seconds that justify all of it —the getting up, the paddling out, the waiting,the missing, the returning, the waiting again —for the barrel, for the cathedral,for the moment the universe shows you what it’s made of from the inside

and you inside it,
calm,
alive,
lasting a lifetime.